The History of Silk, Cotton, Linen, Wool, and Other Fibrous Substances; / Including Observations on Spinning, Dyeing, and Weaving.

by Clinton G. Gilroy

Columbus also found the cotton plant growing wild, and in great abundance, in Hispaniola, and other West India islands, and on the continent of South America, where the inhabitants wore cotton dresses, and made their fishing nets of the same material[438]; and when Magellan went on his circumnavigation of the globe, in 1519, the Brazilians were accustomed to make their beds of this vegetable down[439].

[438] Sommario dell’Indie Occidentali del S. Don Pietro Martire, in Ramusio’s Collection, tom. ii. pp. 2, 4, 16, 50. (See [Appendix D.])

[439] Vincentino’s Viaggio atorno il Mondo, (with Ferd. Magellan,) in Ramusio, tom. i. p. 353.

CHAPTER II.
SPINNING AND WEAVING—MARVELLOUS SKILL DISPLAYED IN THESE ARTS.

Unrivalled excellence of India muslins—Testimony of the two Arabian travellers—Marco Polo, and Odoardo Barbosa’s accounts of the beautiful Cotton textures of Bengal—Cæsar Frederick, Tavernier, and Forbes’s testimony—Extraordinary fineness and transparency of Dacca muslins—Specimen brought by Sir Charles Wilkins; compared with English muslins—Sir Joseph Banks’s experiments—Extraordinary fineness of Cotton yarn spun by machinery in England—Fineness of India Cotton yarn—Cotton textures of Soonergong—Testimony of R. Fitch—Hamilton’s account—Decline of the manufactures of Dacca accounted for—Orme’s testimony of the universal diffusion of the Cotton manufacture in India—Processes of the manufacture—Rude implements—Roller gin—Bowing. (Eli Whitney inventor of the Cotton gin—Tribute of respect paid to his memory—Immense value of Mr. Whitney’s invention to growers and manufacturers of Cotton throughout the world.) Spinning wheel—Spinning without a wheel—Loom—Mode of weaving—Forbes’s description—Habits and remuneration of Spinners, Weavers, &c.—Factories of the East India Company—Marvellous skill of the Indian workman accounted for—Mills’s testimony—Principal Cotton fabrics of India, and where made—Indian commerce in Cotton goods—Alarm created in the woollen and silk manufacturing districts of Great Britain—Extracts from publications of the day—Testimony of Daniel De Foe (Author of Robinson Crusoe.)—Indian fabrics prohibited in England, and most other countries of Europe—Petition from Calcutta merchants—Present condition of the City of Dacca—Mode of spinning fine yarns—Tables showing the comparative prices of Dacca and British manufactured goods of the same quality.

The antiquity of the cotton manufacture in India having been noticed in the last chapter, the present one will give some account of the remarkable excellence of the Indian fabrics,—the processes and machines by which they are wrought,—the condition of the population engaged in this department of industry,—the extensive commerce formerly carried on in these productions to every quarter of the globe, and the causes that have tended to destroy it.

The Indians have in all ages maintained an unapproached and almost incredible perfection in their fabrics of cotton. Indeed some of their muslins might be thought the work of fairies or insects, rather than of men; but these are produced in small quantities, and have seldom been exported. In the same province from which the ancient Greeks obtained the finest muslins then known, namely, the province of Bengal, these astonishing fabrics are manufactured to the present day[440].

[440] Bains’s “History of the Cotton Manufacture,” p. 55.

We learn from two Arabian travellers of the ninth century, that “in this country (India) they make garments of such extraordinary perfection, that nowhere else are the like to be seen. These garments are for the most part round, and wove to that degree of fineness that they may be drawn through a ring of moderate size[441].” Marco Polo, in the thirteenth century, mentions the coast of Coromandel, and especially Masulipatam, as producing “the finest and most beautiful cottons that are to be found in any part of the world[442];” and this is still the case as to the flowered and glazed cottons, called chintzes, though the muslins of the Coromandel coast are inferior to those of Bengal.

[441] Anciennes Relations des Indes et de la Chine, de deux Voyageurs Mahometans, qui y allerent dans le neuviéme siecle, p. 21.