The progress of the cotton trade, which had for so long been restricted, now became more rapid. In the fourteenth century the fustians and dimities of Venice and Milan were much esteemed, especially in Northern Europe. Half a century later the manufacture was established in Saxony and Suabia, whence it made its way into the Netherlands. At Bruges and Ghent a large trade arose, especially in the fustians which were manufactured in Prussia and Germany, and were exported thence to Flanders and Spain.
At the end of the fifteenth century two events took place within a few years of each other which formed an important epoch, not only in the history of the cotton trade, but in the history of the world—namely, the discovery of America by Columbus, and that of the passage to India round the Cape of Good Hope by Vasco da Gama. The commerce of Genoa having been supplanted by the Venetians, Christopher Columbus, a Genoese, conceived the plan of sailing to India by a new course. It having been admitted by philosophers that the world was globular, he rightly argued that any point on it might be reached by sailing westward, as well as by travelling eastward. He therefore laid his scheme, first, before the Council of the Republic of Genoa, and afterwards before the King of Portugal; but, as it was unfavourably received by both, he persuaded Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain to grant him two ships, and with these he sailed westward in search of India, on the 3rd of August, 1492. On his arrival, thirty days afterwards, at one of the Bahamas, the first land he saw after crossing the Atlantic, his vessels were surrounded by canoes filled with natives bringing cotton yarn and thread in skeins for exchange. And when he landed in Cuba, which he at first supposed to be the mainland of India, he saw the women there wearing dresses made of cotton cloth, and also found in use strong nets made of cotton cords, which the inhabitants stretched between poles and in which they slept at night. These were called “hamacas,” whence comes our word “hammock.” The people there had also so great a quantity of spun cotton on spindles that it was estimated there was 12,000 lbs. weight of it in a single house. Oviedo says the same of Hayti, and, at the discovery of Guadaloupe, the same year, cotton thread in skeins was found everywhere, and looms wherewith to weave it. There, as well as at Hayti and Cuba, the idols were made of cotton, and, in 1520, Fernando Magalhaens found the natives of Brazil using cotton for stuffing beds. The growth and manufacture of cotton, which were the first things brought to the notice of Columbus in the “West Indies,” and which were soon afterwards found existing in various parts of South America, had apparently been handed down to those who practised them from a time far away in the past.
The Eastern Hemisphere is popularly regarded, even at the present day, as possessing a monopoly of antiquity, or, at any rate, of ancient civilization. It is not difficult to understand the mental process by which this notion is produced. In the first place the mind is hardly prepared to receive the idea that the inhabitants of countries of the existence of which we have, comparatively, so recently become aware as the continent of America should have attained to a high degree of civilization long before the natives of Britain emerged from savage barbarism. This feeling found expression in the distinctive appellations given respectively to the two hemispheres, the “Old World” and the “New World.” Secondly, the only written historical records that have come down to us from the remote past relate to Europe, Asia, and Africa. But the oldest authentic history is only yesterday’s news in comparison with the age of the world, and that which was called “the New World” is as old as the rest of the globe, and, apparently, was populated at quite as early a period. For in Mexico and Central America are found unmistakable proofs of the greatness and culture of former dwellers in the land. Immense piles of cyclopean masonry, of inconceivable grandeur, and incalculable antiquity; mounds and pyramids as massive as those of Egypt, huge reservoirs for water, aqueducts, ruins of public buildings, temples and palaces, tell of a powerful and wealthy nation, skilled in engineering and other sciences, and in all the important arts of civilized life. These were followed by successive races, differing from each other in habits, laws, arts, manufactures and religious worship. But all have passed away and out of memory as completely as if they had never been. We know nothing of their wars or dynasties, their prosperity or decay. Their works are their sole history. Only their ruined monuments remain to show that they once existed; and these are sometimes found in forest solitudes so far from the habitations of those who now occupy their territories, that the traveller who unexpectedly comes upon them is startled, like Crusoe by the foot-print, to find that man has been there.
In Peru, too, the companions of Pizarro found everywhere evidence of a vast antiquity, and of the former existence of a people fully equal to the Romans in grandeur of conception and skill in construction of their marvellous public works. The remains of the capital city of the Chinus of Northern Peru cover not less than a hundred and twenty square miles. Tombs, temples and palaces arise on every hand, ruined for centuries, but still traceable; immense pyramidal structures, some of them half a mile in circuit; prisons, furnaces for smelting metals, and all the structures of a busy city may still be found there. Cieça de Leon mentions having seen at Teahuanaca great buildings, and stones so large and so overgrown that it was incomprehensible how the power of man could have placed them where they were. In another place he saw enormous gateways made of masses of stone, some of which were thirty feet long, fifteen feet high, and six feet thick. The ancient Peruvians made considerable use of aqueducts, which they built with great skill of hewn stones and cement. One of these aqueducts extended four hundred and fifty miles across sierras and rivers. Their roads, macadamized with broken stone mixed with lime and asphalte, were described by Humboldt as “marvellous,” and he said that none of the Roman roads he had seen in Italy, in the south of France, or in Spain, had appeared to him more imposing than the great road of the ancient Peruvians from Quito to Cuzco, and through the whole length of the empire to Chili.
These were the works of men who lived thousands of years before the times of the Incas, and amongst their manufactures was that of cotton.
In 1831, Lord Colchester brought from ancient tombs at Arica, in Peru, and placed in the British Museum, some mummy-cloths woven of cotton, the fibres of which seen under the microscope are very tortuous, and resemble those of Gossypium hirsutum, which is probably the primitive cotton plant of South America. The cultivation and manufacture of cotton, therefore, in the “New World” seems to have been at least coeval with the similar use of it in India.
When Pizarro conquered Peru, in 1532, he found the cotton manufacture still existent and flourishing there, for the works of the Peruvians in cotton and wool (the latter chiefly that of the vicuna) exceeded in fineness anything known in Europe at that time. He also learned that, from the foundation of the empire, at an unknown date, the dress of the Inca, or Sovereign, had always been made of cotton, and of many colours, by the “Virgins of the Sun.”
When Cortez and his comrades conquered Mexico in 1519, the people had neither flax, nor silk, nor wool of sheep. They supplied the want of these with cotton, fine feathers, and the fur of hares and rabbits. The use of cotton, which had long previously existed, as is known from Aztec hieroglyphics, was as common and almost as diversified amongst the Mexicans as it is now amongst the nations of Europe. They made of it clothing of every kind, hangings, defensive armour, and other things innumerable. Cortez was so struck by the beautiful texture of some articles that were presented to him by the natives of Yucatan, that a few days after his arrival in Mexico he sent home to the Emperor Charles V., amongst other rich presents, a variety of cotton mantles, some all white, and others chequered and figured in divers colours. On the outside they had a long nap, like a shaggy cloth, but on the inside they were without any colour or nap. A number of “under-waistcoats,” “handkerchiefs,” “counterpanes,” and “carpets” of cotton were also sent to Europe by Cortez.
Columbus’s great discovery was not immediately turned to account, so far as the cotton trade was concerned, although it was destined to be most valuable to that industry at a later period. Astonishing as was his success, and great and extensive as were its results in finding a “New World” hardly inferior in magnitude to one-third of the habitable surface of the globe, he had not achieved exactly that which was the original object of his voyage—the discovery of a westerly course to India. When, therefore, only six years afterwards, a direct sea route to the East, by sailing round the Cape of Good Hope, was found, the exploit was for some time regarded as the more important of the two, because its probable effects were more easily perceptible.
The Portuguese, who had explored the west coasts of Africa which lay nearest to their own country, and had made several unsuccessful attempts to find a passage eastward, determined to make another vigorous effort to surmount the difficulty. Accordingly, on the 8th of July, 1497, a small squadron sailed from the Tagus, under the command of Vasco da Gama. After a long and dangerous voyage this navigator rounded the promontory which had for several years been the object of the hopes and dread of his countrymen, and skirting the south-east coast, arrived at Melinda, about two degrees north of Zanzibar. There he found a people so far civilized that they carried on an active commerce, not only with the nations on their own coast, but with the remote countries of Asia. Taking some of these natives on board his ships as pilots, he sailed across the Indian Ocean, and on the 22nd of May, 1498, landed at Calicut, on the Malabar coast, ten months and two days after his departure from Lisbon.