The history of silk, cotton, linen, wool, and other fibrous ... - Cd3wd.com

330 THE COTTON MANUFACTURE.
precious stones. Such a specification would have been equally necessarj' for the
direction both of the merchant and of the tax-gatherer.
In confirmation of these remarks it may be observed, that the
passages collected in this chapter represent cotton cloth as an
expensive and curious production rather than as an article of
common use among the Greeks and Romans. Among the an-
cients linen must have been far cheaper than cotton, whereas
the improvements in navigation, the discovery of the passage
to India by the Cape of Good Hope, and still more the discovery
of America, have now made cotton the cheaper article among
us, and have thus brought it into general use,
India produces several varieties of cotton, both of the herba-
ceous and the tree kinds. Marco Polo mentions that " cotton
is produced in Guzerat in large quantities from a tree that is
about six yards in height, and bears during twenty years ; but
the cotton taken from trees of this age is not adapted for spin-
ning, but only quilting. Such, on the contrary, as is taken
from trees of twelve years old, is suitable for muslins and other
manufactures of extraordinary fineness*." Sir John Mande-
ville, on the other hand, who travelled in the fourteenth centu-
ry, fifty years later than Polo, mentions the annual herbaceous
cotton as cultivated in India : he says— " In many places the
seed of the cotton, (cothon,) which we call tree-wool, is sown
every year, and there springs up from its copses of low shrubs,
on which this wool growst." Forbes also, in his Oriental Memoirs,
thus describes the herbaceous cotton of Guzerat :— " The
cotton shrub, which grows to the height of three or four feet,
and in verdure resembles the currant bush, requires a longer
time than rice (which grows up and is reaped in three months)
to bring its delicate produce to perfection. The shrubs are
])lanted between the rows of rice, but do not impede its growth,
or prevent its being reaped. Soon after the rice harvest is over,
the cotton bushes put forth a beautiful yellow fiower, with a
crimson eye in each petal ; this is succeeded by a green pod,
filled with a white stringy pulp ; the pod turns brown and
hard as it ripens, and then separates into two or three divisions
* Book 'ii. chap. 29. t Hakluyt's Voyages, vol. ii. p. 169.