160 
ANNALS OF THE! 
and silk fabricators, but at length it was overcome, and it is supposed that about 
the year 1368, the cultivation became general throughout the empire. Marco Polo 
makes frequent mention of both the cultivation and manufacture of cotton, in his 
account of his travels in China, Persia and Armenia. From Benin, on the Guinea 
coast, in 1590, cotton cloth of African manufacture, was brought to London. The 
cotton tree grows indeed plentifully on the borders of the Senegal, Gambia, and 
Niger Rivers, at Timbuctoo, Sierra Leone, in the Cape de Verde Islands, on the 
coast of Guinea, in Abyssinia, and throughout the interior of Africa. 
Neither in the Bible, nor among any Hebrew writers, do we find one single 
instance wherein cotton is mentioned. The ancient Egyptians, although they were 
no doubt familiar with its uses from the commercial intercourse which they held 
with the surrounding nations, seem to have religiously proscribed it as an article 
of dress or of domestic use, for upon Egyptian tombs, particularly those of Thebes, 
where we find sculptured the active employments of the long embalmed dead, flax 
is common from which was obtained the linen spoken of in Scripture, but the cot- 
ton plant has never yet been found represented, among the m< numents of this 
ancient people. In support of this theory, it may be pointed out, that the embalm- 
ing of the dead has not only preserved the bodies of the ancient Egyptians, but 
also that millions of yards of cloth, such as was used daily by them in their house- 
holds, have been exposed to the gaze of the curious and learned of modern times, 
for the cerements of the mummies in part are composed, so it has been ascertained, 
of the napkins and sheets that by contact with the dead body were polluted, and 
yet only the stufis formed from the raw material furnished by the flax plant have 
been found. 
About a century ago, a learned Frenchman asserted that cotton — or as the 
French call it colon en laine Anglice^ cotton wool — formed the coverings of the 
mummies. Everything conspired to force him to this conclusion, for the fabric 
resembled cotton, and as he said, in no way did it differ from that material. But 
while the dispute raged, some men more practic.d than theoretical, applied the mi- 
croscope to the several fibres of cotton and flax : the former they found was com- 
posed of transparent flat ribbon-like fibres, with thickened edges, and very much 
twisted ; t\ie latter was in the form of straight cylindrical tubes. The magniiying 
glass thus finally confirmed tradition and history in the opinion held conjointly, 
that the Egyptians used linen cloth alone, for the straight cylindrical tubes only 
were discovered. When the nationality of the ancient Egyptians was destroyed 
by foreign conquest, corruption as a sequence became prevalent, or we might wiih 
greater truth say, the fitness of things became more apparent, and knowledge over- 
came superstition, paving the way, and ere long cotton cloth was introduced into 
Egypt. 
Although there are but few notices among either Greek or Latin writers, still 
