162 
ANNALS OF THE 
had completed the conquest (we had almost written the desolation] of Mexico, 
robes and mantles of native manufacture, which from having been really manufac- 
tured, made by the hand,, were extremely fine and delicate ; for it is a singular fact 
that the most perfect piece of machinery of the present day, cannot equal the work- 
manship of unaided semi-barbarous hands. For although some contend that cloth 
produced from a mill can be as perfect as that prepared by the hand, yet he must 
surely forget that the dust, oil and impure atmosphere of the milling process, are 
all escaped by the creation of the hand, which thus retains its natural gloss. This 
skill in weaving cotton into cloth, is still possessed by the otherwise degenerate de- 
scendants of the ancient Mexicans. 
North America, it is said, really possesses greater native varieties of the cotton 
plant than any other portion of the world. The cotton of the Pinos of Texas is ex- 
traordinarily fine and long ; while the Navajos living in the country bordering on 
New Mexico, have abundant cotton fields, and when their produce is examined in 
the manufactured piece of goods, the staple is found to possess both strength and 
fineness. 
In Great Britain, 
The cottpn manufacture is supposed to have been introduced into England in 
the early part of the seventeenth century, some writers give 1641 as the date. Mr. 
Baines suggests that the art was brought from Flanders, when the Duke of Parma, 
in 1585, captured and ruined the City of Antwerp, and thus caused the Protestant 
artisans and workmen to fly to England, and there introduce their art. 
England, at that period, obtained her trifling supply wholly from Smyrna and 
Cyprus, in the Levant. It appears, however, that on an average of the five years 
ending 1705, the quantity annually imported amounted only to 1,170,881 lbs. At 
the accession of George III., (1760), the entire value of all the cotlon goods manu- 
factured in Great Britain was estimated to amount to only £200,000 a year ; and 
it was not till after the invention of the spinning-jenny by Hargreaves, in 1767, and 
the subsequent discoveries of the spinning-frame of Sir Richard Arkwright, in 17.69,.. 
the mule-jenny of Mr. Crompton in 1779, and the power-loom of the Reverend Mr. 
Cartwright, that the manufacture began to advance with any degree of rapidity. 
But the imports of cotton wool, which in 1781 were 5,198,778, had increased in 
1791 to 28,706,675 lbs.; in 1801, they were 56,004,305 lbs ; in 1811, 91,576,635 
lbs.; in 1821, 126,420,000 lbs. ; and in 1830, 259,856,000 lbs. It is remarkable, 
that at present more than one-half of our cotton wool comes from the United Stales, 
whereas previously to 1790, North America did not supply us with a single pound 
weight of raw cotton. In fact, at the time (1784) when Egypt, and other portions 
of Afjrica, with Hindostan, failed to supply to England her increasing demand of 
