In the 47th chapter of the same book, Herodotus describes a corselet sent by Aahmes (or Amasis) II., King of Egypt, to Sparta as having been “ornamented with gold and fleeces from the trees”—padded with cotton, in fact.
Ctesias, also, who was the contemporary of Herodotus, and was made prisoner, and kept by the King of Persia as his court physician for seventeen years, was acquainted with the use of a kind of wool, the produce of trees, for spinning and weaving amongst the natives of India, for he mentions in his ‘Indica’ a fragment quoted by Photius, “tree-garments”; and that he thus referred to clothing made from these tree-fleeces we have the testimony of Varro:—“Ctesias says that there are in India trees that bear wool.”
Nearchus, the admiral of Alexander the Great, reported that “there were in India trees bearing, as it were, flocks or bunches of wool, and that the natives made of this wool garments of surpassing whiteness, or else their black complexions made the material appear whiter than any other.”
Aristobulus, another of Alexander’s generals, made mention in his journal of the cotton plant, under the name of “the wool-bearing tree,” and stated that “it bore a capsule that contained seeds which were taken out, and that which remained was carded like wool.”
Strabo, who records this (lib. xv. cap. 21), referring to it in another paragraph, writes:—“Nearchus says that their (the natives’) fine clothing was made from this wool, and that the Macedonians used it for mattresses and the stuffing of their saddles.”[28]
[28] Unfortunately the Journal and Narrative of Nearchus, written B.C. 325-324, are lost, as are also those of Aristobulus, who seems to have been a very accurate observer; and we are indebted to Strabo and Arrian for the summaries and extracts from them that we possess. Strabo’s ‘Geographia’ was completed A.D. 21, about three years before his death. Fabius Arrianus wrote his ‘Historia Indica,’ and ‘Periplus Maris Erythræi,’ which contain valuable particulars of Alexander’s expedition, about A.D. 131-135.
Theophrastus, the disciple of Aristotle, writing about B.C. 306, says[29]:—
[29] ‘De Historia Plantarum,’ lib. iv. cap. 4.
“The trees from which the Indians make their clothes have leaves like those of the black mulberry, but the whole plant resembles the dog-rose. They are planted in rows on the plains, so as to look like vines at a distance.”
In another passage of the same book (cap. 9) he writes:—