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

10 CULTIVATION AND MANUFACTURE OF
the birth of Peleg, it is supposed that Noah, being then about
his 840th year, wearied with the growing depravity of his
descendants^ retired with a select company to a remote
corner of Asia, and there began what in after ages has
been termed the Chinese monarchy^'''* This view of the sub-
ject, we beheve, coincides perfectly with the reputable testi-
monies presented by Mairan, Bailly, Guignes, and Sir William
Jones, and demonstrates that the transit of more central abo-
rigines, since the deluge, to the extremes of China, was per-
fectly feasiblcjt and a matter of even high probability.
The first ancient author, who affords any evidence respect-
ing the use of silk, is Aristotle. He does not, however, appear
to have been accurately acquainted with the changes of the
silk-worm ; nor does he say, that the animal was bred or the
raw material produced in Cos. He only says, " Pamphile,
daughter of Plates, is reported to have first woven it in Cos."
(See Chapters ii. iii. and iv. of this Part.)
Long before the time of Aristotle a regular trade had been
established in the interior of Asia, which brought its most
valuable productions, and especially those which were most
easily transported, to the shores opposite this flourishing island.
Nothing therefore is more likely than that the raw silk from
the interior of Asia was brought to Cos and there manufac-
tured. We shall see hereafter from the testimony of Procopius,
that it was in like manner brought some centuries later to be
woven in the Phoenician cities. Tyre and Berytus.
The arts of spinning and weaving, Avhich rank next in im-
portance to agriculture, having been found among almost all
the nations of the old and new continents, even among those
little removed from barbarism, are reasonably supposed to
have been invented at a very remote period of the world's
history!. They evidently existed in Egypt in the time of
* Clarke's "Treatise on the Mulberry-tree, and Silk-wonn," pp. 14, 18, 20,
21, 27, and 34.
t See chap. iv. p. 67. Also Plate VII. (Map.
X According to Pliny, Semiramia, the Assyrian queen, was believed to have
been the iuventress of the art of weaving. Minerva is in some of the ancient