Exhibuit vivos carbasus alba focos.
The fire had died, and Vesta urged her claim,
When the white cotton show’d a living flame.
The story is related by Valerius Maximus (i. 7.). Although we are not informed of the date of the event, it appears from his language that the fillet was of fine muslin: “Cum carbasum, quam optimum habebat, foculo imposuisset, subito ignis emicuit.” This description is well suited to the nature of cotton, than which nothing was more easily ignited.
The passage in Virgil’s Georgics, which mentions cotton, has been already quoted (See [Part I. chapter II. p. 24.]). By the Æthiopians, whose groves were “white with soft wool,” he probably intended those of Arabia; and we may suppose him to have referred to accounts, not so much of the Gossypium Herbaceum, to which the word “groves” (nemora) would not apply, as to groves of Gossypium Arboreum and Bombyx Ceiba. In the following passages of Æneid he mentions cotton under its proper name, though probably not intending to distinguish accurately between cotton and linen, and only using the term for the sake of ornament:—
Jamque dies, alterque dies processit, et auræ
Vela vocunt, tumidoque inflatur carbasus austro. iii. 356.
Two days were past, and now the southern gales
Call us aboard, and stretch the swelling sails.
Pitt’s Translation.