Theophrastus, the disciple of Aristotle, writing about B.C. 306, says[29]:—

“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:—

“In the Island of Tylos, which is in the Arabian Gulf,[30] the wool-bearing trees, which grow there abundantly, have leaves like the vine, but smaller. They bear no fruit, but the pod containing the wool is about the size of a spring apple (“μηλον”), whilst it is unripe and closed, but when it is ripe it opens: the wool is then gathered from it, and woven into cloths of various qualities—some inferior, but others of great value.”

This description by Theophrastus is remarkably correct as applied to the herbaceous variety of the cotton-plant, from which the chief supply of cotton for spinning and weaving into cloth has always been obtained. In its mode of growth—branched, spreading, and flexible—it may well be likened to the dog-rose; and its palmate leaves bear a close resemblance to those of the black mulberry, which differ little from the leaves of some varieties of the vine. The remark relative to the mode of cultivation is also exactly applicable to the cotton-plant, which is set in rows about four feet asunder, and the plants about two feet apart, so that a field of it resembles a vineyard when seen from a distance.

Pomponius Mela, the author next in order of time, also writes in his account of India[31] of the “trees that produce wool used by the natives for clothing.”

Then comes Pliny, who, incompetent and worthless as a naturalist, though admirable as a writer, obscured this subject, as he did many others. In his ‘Natural History’[32] he mentions cotton in four different paragraphs, and in every one of them inaccurately. He confuses cotton with flax, and the fabrics woven of it with linen, and treats of silk as a downy substance scraped from the leaves of trees. And, in transcribing, or translating, the passage from Theophrastus relating to the “wool-bearing trees,” he distorts the author’s words, and states that “these trees bear gourds the size of a quince, which burst when ripe, and display balls of wool out of which the inhabitants make cloths like valuable linen.” Pliny therefore seems to have been the author of the “gourd” portion of the story which afterwards obtained currency in Western Europe.

I shall quote one more ancient mention of the “fleece-bearing plant,” because the author of it gives a more exact description than any previous writer of that portion of it from which the wool is taken.

Julius Pollux, who wrote about a hundred years later than Pliny, says in his ‘Onomasticon’:—

“There are also Byssina and Byssus, a kind of flax. But among the Indians a sort of wool is obtained from a tree. The cloth made from this wool may be compared with linen, except that it is thicker. The tree produces a fruit most nearly resembling a walnut, but three-cleft. After the outer covering, which is like a walnut, has divided and become dry, the substance resembling wool is extracted, and is used in the manufacture of cloth.”

This remark, of the pericarp of the cotton-pod, in some species of Gossypium, being three-cleft, is in accordance with fact, and is not noticed by any previous writer.

In tracing the development of these early and truthful accounts of the cotton-plant into the complete fable of the compound plant-animal, the “Vegetable Lamb of Scythia,” we shall find it, as in the case of some other myths of the Middle Ages, attributable to two principal causes:—

1. The misinterpretation of ambiguous or figurative language; 2. The similarity of appearance of two actually different and incongruous objects.

It is a curious fact, which I believe has not hitherto been noticed in connection with this subject, that the Greek word “μηλον” (melon), very fitly used by Theophrastus in the passage quoted (p. 48) to describe the form and appearance of the unripe cotton-pod, may be equally correctly translated “a fruit,” “an apple,” or “a sheep”: the adjective “ἑαρινόν,” which is also used, means “vernal”; therefore the phrase may be regarded as signifying either that the vegetable wool was taken from a “spring apple” growing upon a tree, or from a “spring-sheep” (or lamb) growing upon a tree. Although I believe that the mistake originated, as I shall presently explain, in the actual and substantial resemblance between cotton wool and lamb’s wool, rather than in the verbal identity of an appellative noun, it is not improbable that this ambiguous phrase of convertible interpretation may, in some measure, have contributed to convey, many centuries later, to readers of a dead language who knew nothing of the plant referred to, an erroneous idea of the nature of “the fleeces that grew on trees.” It would seem so much more likely that a soft fleece of white wool should grow upon a young lamb yeaned in spring-time than inside a fruit like an apple in the partly-formed and unripe condition in which it is found in spring, that students in the Middle Ages, as they pondered doubtfully over this word of double meaning, would probably prefer the first interpretation, and translate the passage of Theophrastus as a statement that the wool was taken from a “spring-sheep,” or lamb, growing upon a tree which bore no other fruit. It is also probable that this use of the Greek word “melon” gave rise to the report in later times that the seed of the plant which bore the “Vegetable Lamb” was like that of a melon or gourd.

We may next take into account the prevalence amongst many tribes and nations in both hemispheres of the custom of using figurative language in relation to the objects and occurrences of their daily life.

A very striking and remarkable proof is given us by Herodotus that the Scythians of the North-West, who carried both the cotton and the rumour of the lamb-plant into Muscovy, were in the habit of speaking thus figuratively and metaphorically. He writes (lib. iv. cap. 2):—

“The part beyond the north, the Scythians say, can neither be seen nor passed through, by reason of the feathers shed there; for the earth and air are full of feathers, and it is these which interrupt the view.”

Further on (lib. iv. cap. 31) he also observes:—

“With respect to the feathers with which the Scythians say the air is filled, and on account of which it is not possible either to see further upon the continent, or to pass through it, I entertain the following opinion. In the upper parts of this country it continually snows—less in summer than in winter, as is reasonable. Now, whoever has seen snow falling thick near him will know what I mean; for snow is like feathers, and on account of the winter being so severe the northern parts of this country are uninhabited. I think, then, that the Scythians and their neighbours call the snow feathers, comparing them together.”

Herodotus was, of course, right in this interpretation.

Who can doubt that the people who would thus realistically describe snow as feathers would probably describe the white wool of the cotton-pod as “tree-lamb’s-wool,” the produce of a “lamb-plant,” or “plant-lamb”?

The growth and development of the story of “the Scythian Lamb” from the similarity of appearance of two really different objects may be best explained by comparing it with another Natural-history myth, which ran curiously parallel with it. I allude to the fable that Sir John Mandeville tells us he related to his Tartar acquaintances, viz. that of the “Barnacle Geese”—which has never been surpassed as a specimen of ignorant credulity and persistent error.

From the twelfth to the end of the seventeenth century it was implicitly and almost universally believed that in the Western Islands of Scotland certain geese, of which the nesting-places were never found, instead of being hatched from eggs, like other birds, were bred from “shell-fish” which grew on trees. Upon the shores where these geese abounded, pieces of timber and old trunks of trees covered with barnacles were often seen which had been stranded by the sea. From between the partly opened shells of the barnacles protruded their plumose cirrhi, which in some degree resemble the feathers of a bird. Hence arose the belief that they contained real birds. The fishermen persuaded themselves that these birds within the shells were the geese whose origin they had been previously unable to discover, and that they were thus bred, instead of being hatched, like other birds, from eggs. As the tale spread to a distance, it gained by repetition, like the story of “The Three Black Crows” amusingly told by Dr. John Byrom.[33] The trees found upon the shore were soon reported to be trees growing on the shore; that which grew on trees people soon asserted to be the fruit of trees; and thus, from step to step, the story increased in wonder and obtained credit. It was discussed during many centuries by philosophers and men of learning, who, one after another, accepted the evidence in its favour, until Sir Robert Moray, F.R.S., in 1678, reported to the Royal Society that he had examined these barnacles, and that in every shell that he had opened he had “found a little bird—the little bill, like that of a goose; the eyes marked; the head, neck, breast, wings, tail, and feet formed, the feathers everywhere perfectly shaped and blackish-coloured, and the feet like those of other water-fowl.” This nonsense was published in the ‘Philosophical Transactions’ (No. 137, January and February, 1678) under the auspices of the highest representatives of science in this country. The old botanist Gerard had previously (in 1597) had the audacity to assert that he had witnessed the transformation of the “shell-fish” into geese.[34]

In like manner the “wool-bearing plant” of Ctesias, Nearchus, Aristobulus, and Theophrastus, the plant of which Herodotus wrote that “it bore as its fruit fleeces which surpassed those of lambs in beauty and excellence,” was soon reported to be “a plant bearing fruit within which was a little lamb having a fleece of surpassing beauty and excellence.” As it was evident that a living lamb must take food, the “lytylle best” was, in the next version, kindly placed upon a stalk, and so balanced thereon as to be able to bend downward, and browze upon the surrounding herbage. Of course the lamb, if it fed on grass, must have digestive and other organs, like those of lambs ordinarily begotten, so these were liberally bestowed upon it with as much particularity as that exercised by Sir Robert Moray in enumerating the “parts and features” of the “little tree-bird.”[35] The transformation of the wondrous “plant-animal” from “a little lamb with a white fleece disclosed by the bursting of a ripe seed-pod growing on a stalk” into “a lamb growing on a stalk attached to its navel, and browzing on the herbage within its reach,” vastly increased the difficulty of identifying it. Like the barnacle geese, it was discussed by philosophers and sought for by travellers; but its features had been distorted beyond recognition, and, instead of endeavouring to find its original portrait in the pages of old historians and geographers, enquirers looked for fresh information concerning it in the misleading tales of successive travellers. At last, as we have seen, another “vegetable lamb” crossed the trail of the original lost one, in the shape of the two Chinese toy-dogs laid before the Royal Society by Sir Hans Sloane and Dr. Breyn. That distinguished body of savants unfortunately accorded their recognition to the wrongful claimant, and ever since then botanists and antiquarians have regarded the problem as solved, and have been satisfied that in these few rude models of “tan-coloured dogs” they have found the true and original “snow-white” “Vegetable Lamb of Scythia.”

The contented acceptance by botanists and other representatives of science, down to the present day, of three or four trumpery toys artificially and roughly fashioned by the Chinese from the rhizomes of a fern which does not grow in Tartary or Scythia, and brought to Europe by travellers at rare intervals, as sufficient to account for the origin of a rumour which spread from Asia all over Europe and attracted the attention of learned men of all countries for many centuries, is not the least remarkable circumstance in the history of the legend of the “Scythian Lamb.”

Well might the old historians consider worthy of record the reports they had heard of the existence of the “wool-bearing tree,” for, as Dr. Ure has remarked,[36] “it would be universally regarded as a miracle of vegetation did not familiarity blunt the moral feelings of mankind. This class of plants, largely distributed over the torrid zone, affords to the inhabitants a spontaneous and inexhaustible supply of the clothing material best adapted to screen their swarthy bodies from the scorching sun, and to favour the cooling influence of the breeze, as well as cutaneous exhalation. While the tropical heats change the soft wool of the sheep into a harsh, scanty hair, unfit for clothing purposes, they cherish and ripen the vegetable wool, with its more slender and porous fibres, admirably suited for clothing in a hot climate, as the grosser and warmer animal fibres are in a cold one. No sooner does the cotton pod arrive at maturity than its swollen capsules burst with an elastic force, in gaping segments, in order, as it were, to display to the most careless eye their white fleecy treasure, and to invite the hand of the observer to pluck it from the seeds, and to work it up into a light and beautiful robe. Thus held forth from the extremity of every bough, by its resemblance to sheep’s wool it could not fail to attract attention.”

Such keen observers as the ancient conquerors of India would have been sure to notice with surprise and interest the wonderful vegetable product which could be compared to nothing so aptly as to the white, soft wool of a little lamb, to appreciate its value and usefulness, and to admire the fabrics manufactured from it. And, as these fabrics gradually found their way northward from India by the great caravan routes, either by Samarcand, or by the passes of the Hindu Kush, by Bokhara and Khiva, through Turkestan and Tartary into Russia, in one direction, and by Egypt to the countries on the Mediterranean in another, the sensation they would cause is not difficult to realise. We can imagine how the newly-arrived trader, as he displayed his goods, would be eagerly questioned by intending purchasers of the novel, soft, white or coloured cloths, so well suited to their requirements, as to the nature of the raw material of which they had been woven. We can picture to ourselves their astonishment when he explained to them that the delicate, white, flossy fibres from which his fabrics were made, of which he, perhaps, showed them a sample, and which looked so like lamb’s wool, was the produce of a plant, the fruit of which burst open when it became ripe, and exposed to view the white wool within it. And we can easily understand how the fame of this spread, and was carried into distant lands, and how this “vegetable lamb’s wool” was discussed and talked about in countries where it, and the yarn spun from it, and the cloths woven from it, had not yet penetrated.

Now, let us complete our identification of the cotton-pod of India as “the Vegetable Lamb” of the fable by showing its right to the title of “the Scythian Lamb.”

There is probably no race of men, or rather aggregate of races, mentioned prominently in history, of whom, and of whose country so little has been definitely known as of the ancient Scythians. They have been generally and vaguely, and, to a certain extent, correctly, regarded as represented in modern times by the numerous hordes of Tartars inhabiting the lands north of the mountains of the Caucasus, and part of central and northern Asia. So exclusively have they been identified with these tribes that the terms Tartary and Scythia have been looked upon as synonymous, and thus “the Scythian Lamb” has been called also the “Tartarian Lamb,” or “the Vegetable Lamb of Tartary.”

Under the name of “Scythia” was included (as may be seen on any good classical map) a vast territory, partly in Europe and partly in Asia, extending from the 25th to the 116th degree of East longitude. The European portion of it was comparatively a small province, known as “Scythia Parva,” and comprised those districts of Silistria and Bessarabia bordering the western shores of the Black Sea, south of the mouths of the Danube. Scythia in Asia, which was separated from Scythia Parva by the two Sarmatias, included the whole of Turkestan, Thibet, Mongolia, and Siberia. It was bounded on the West by the Ural Mountains and river, and extended northward through then unknown regions to the Arctic Circle, and southward to the Himalayas. But still further south, beyond the western Himalayas—the Hindu-Kush—was another part of Scythia, known as “Indo-Scythia.” This stretched southward to the Erythrean Sea (the Arabian Sea), and was that part of India now called Scinde and the Punjab. Through it flowed the Indus and the Hydaspes, and it was on the banks of the latter river, at Bucephalia (either the present Jhelum, or Jubalpore, eighteen miles lower), that Alexander’s admiral collected the flotilla which he conducted down the Hydaspes to its confluence with the Indus, and along the whole course of that great river, and made his way by its lower mouth into the open water of the Arabian Sea. Then and there it was—from the time of their arrival in the country, during the war with Pontus and other Indian princes, and on their ten months’ voyage homeward—that Alexander and his commodore Nearchus saw the native population of Indo-Scythia “clad in garments the material of which was whiter than any other, or at any rate appeared so in contrast with their wearers’ swarthy skin,” and which were “made of the wool like that of lambs, which grew in tufts and bunches upon trees.”

Although more than two thousand years have passed since then, Nearchus’s description of this costume—“a shirt, or tunic, reaching to the middle of the leg, a sheet folded about the shoulders, and a turban rolled round the head”—would be almost equally accurate at the present day. Its wearers may be congratulated that fashion has left unchanged and unspoiled an apparel so serviceable and well-suited to the climate of the country and the habits of its people!

As the “fleeces of vegetable wool, softer and whiter than that of the lamb,” came from Indo-Scythia, the supposed plant-animal that bore them was first called “the Scythian Lamb.”

As time passed on, the name of Scythia in Asia became merged in that of Tartary. From the time that the Mahometans became masters of Egypt and Constantinople, as no Christian was allowed to pass through their dominion to the East, intercourse with India by the two most direct roads ceased entirely. Cotton goods and other merchandise from India were therefore conveyed by the trading caravans before mentioned. The depôt to which they were generally forwarded was Samarcand, as was correctly related to Guillaume Postel by Michel, the Arabic interpreter (p. 13). There they met the great caravan travelling from the East into Russia, and, on the journey, passed through part of Scythia in Asia. In each district the caravan was joined by hosts of Tartar traders carrying with them the wool of their sheep, the hair of their goats, and the skins of both, the soft, curly skins of their lambs, and droves of hardy colts, the produce of their mares, whose milk was, and still is, to them as important an article of diet as that of cows is to ourselves. As the Tartar merchants brought with the fleeces of their sheep, goats, and lambs the fleeces also of “the fine white wool that grew on trees” and the piece-goods made from it, “the vegetable lamb” from which it was supposed to have been sheared became also in this manner identified with Tartary, in the same way as were Indian spices with “Araby,” through which they sometimes passed in transit, but where they never grew. It thus became known as “the wool of the Tartarian Lamb,” and travellers whose curiosity concerning the far-famed “zoophyte” was subsequently aroused sought for it in the dominions of the “Great Cham.” But, just as when Æneas Sylvius Piccolomini, afterwards Pope Pius II., sought in Scotland for the “goose-bearing tree,” which he eagerly desired to see, upon being told that it grew much further north, complained that “miracles will always flee farther and farther away”; so when any painstaking traveller in Tartary endeavoured to investigate the subject of the strange “plant-animal,” he was sure to learn (unless he allowed himself to be cunningly hoaxed by the skin of a natural lamb, or the fruit of another plant) that the object of his search was non-existent in its reputed birthplace, and that he must look for it elsewhere.

Thus the story of the “Scythian” or “Tartarian Lamb” grew, and was exaggerated and distorted, until all traces of its origin were so obliterated that even men of thought and learning have been unable to recognise in the misleading descriptions given of it the plant which, excepting corn, is, perhaps, the most valuable to mankind. For, as I have said, it seems to me to be clear and indubitable that the fruit which burst when ripe and disclosed within it “a little lamb” was the cotton pod, and that the soft, white, delicate fleece of “the Vegetable Lamb of Scythia” was that which we still call “Cotton Wool.”

CHAPTER II.
The History of Cotton and its Introduction into Europe.

In the preceding pages I have referred to the introduction of cotton into the countries north and west of the Indus in so far only as the expressions of old writers relating to it have seemed to afford a clue to the origin of the fable of “the Scythian Lamb.” But I venture to think that a brief account of its botanical affinities, and of its spread and distribution amongst various nations, may form an appropriate and acceptable sequel to the story of the wild rumours that preceded by many centuries its arrival in Western Europe.

The cotton plant, Gossypium, is one of the Malvaceæ—allied to the mallow. There are several varieties of it, but only three principal distinctions require notice—namely, the herbaceous, the tree, and the shrub species. The first and most useful, Gossypium herbaceum, is an annual plant, cultivated in the United States, India, China, and other countries. It grows to a height of from eighteen to twenty inches, and has leaves, which being somewhat lobed, of a bright dark green colour, and marked with brownish veins, were not inaptly compared by Theophrastus with those of the black mulberry and the vine. Its blossoms expand into a pale yellow flower, and when this falls off a three-celled, triangular capsular pod appears. The pod increases to the size of a large cob-nut or small medlar, and becomes brown as the woolly fruit ripens. The expansion of the wool then causes the pod to burst, and it discloses a ball of snow-white (in some species, yellowish) down consisting of three locks—one in each cell—enclosing and firmly adhering to the seeds. As the pods ripen the cotton is gathered by hand, and is exposed to the sun till it is perfectly dry; the seeds are then separated from it, and it is packed into bales for future use or exportation. In the United States it is planted in rows, four feet asunder, and the seeds are set in holes eighteen inches apart.

The shrub cotton grows in almost every country where the annual herbaceous cotton is found. Its duration varies according to the climate. In some places, as in the West Indies, it is biennial or triennial; in others, as in India, Egypt, &c., it lasts from six to ten years; in the hottest climates it is perennial; and in the cooler countries it becomes an annual.

The tree-cotton, Gossypium arboreum, grows in India, Egypt, China, the interior and western coast of Africa, and in some parts of America. As the tree only attains to a height of from twelve to twenty feet, it is difficult to distinguish the tree cotton and the shrub cotton when referred to by travellers.

The cotton plant, in all its varieties, requires a sandy soil. It flourishes on the rocky hills of Hindostan, Africa, and the West Indies, and will grow where the soil is too poor to produce any other valuable crop.

Cotton has always been regarded as indigenous to India, and as the characteristic clothing material of that country, as flax is of Egypt, silk of China, and the wool of sheep and goats of Northern Asia.

The uncertain nature of Hindoo chronology prevents our even guessing at the period when cotton was first spun and woven in India; but there is little doubt that it was so used from the earliest ages of Hindoo civilization. As Dr. Robertson remarks, in his ‘Historical Disquisition on British India’—“Whoever attempts to trace the operations of men in remote times, and to mark the various steps of their progress in any line of exertion, will soon have the mortification to find that the period of authentic history is extremely limited, and if we push our enquiries beyond the period when written history commences we enter upon the region of conjecture, of fable, and of uncertainty.”

The earliest mention of cotton with which we are acquainted is found, according to Dr. Royle,[37] in the first book of the Rig Veda, Hymn 105, verse 8, which is supposed to have been composed fifteen centuries before the Christian era. It is, however, a mere allusion to “threads in the loom,” and although it probably does refer to cotton, the evidence of this is only circumstantial. But in ‘The Sacred Institutes of Manu,’ which date from 800 B.C., cotton is referred to so repeatedly as to imply that it was in common use at that time in India. Dr. Royle says, on the authority of Professor Wilson, that cotton and cotton-cloth are mentioned in that book by the Sanscrit names “Kurpasa” and “Karpasum,” and cotton-seeds as “Kurpas-asthi.” The common Bengali name “Kupas,” indicating cotton with the seed, which is still in general use all over India, and may even be occasionally heard in Lancashire, is, no doubt, derived from the Sanscrit, from which also comes the Latin “carbasus.”

It is evident that the manufacture of cotton in India must date from a very remote period indeed, for long before the time of Herodotus the processes of weaving and dyeing it had attained to a degree of excellence which indicates considerable previous experience; and a large export trade in white and coloured cotton fabrics had even then been established.

From India manufactured cotton seems to have reached Persia in very early times, for the word “Karpas” occurs in the book of Esther (chap. i. v. 6), in the description of the decorations of the palace of Shushan during the right royal festivities given there by King Ahasuerus, B.C. 519. In the verse referred to we are told that there were “white, green, and blue hangings.” The word corresponding with “green” in the Hebrew is “Karpas,” in the Septuagint and Vulgate, carbasinus, and should be rendered “cotton-cloth”; so that the hangings of the palace of Ahasuerus were of white and blue striped cotton, such as may be seen throughout India at the present day. Bishop Heber describes the Hall of Audience of the Emperor of Delhi, as having these striped curtains hanging in festoons about it.

Mattrasses, also, of this striped material, stuffed and padded with coarse cotton, are still used in India as a substitute for doors and window-shutters, to keep out the heat, and are known as “purdahs.” Aristobulus reported that Susiana had when he was there “an atmosphere so glowing and scorching that lizards and serpents could not cross the streets of the city at noon quickly enough to prevent their being burned to death mid-way by the heat”; that “barley spread out in the sun was roasted, as in an oven, and hopped about” (like parched peas); and that “the inhabitants laid earth to the depth of three and a half feet on the roofs of their houses to exclude the suffocating heat,” so that it is not improbable that these blue and white striped “purdahs” were used in the palace of Shushan in the time of Ahasuerus.

Strabo frequently mentions this palace of Shushan, or Susa, which was in the province of Susis, or Susiana, at the head of the Persian Gulf. He tells us that when Alexander the Great became master of Persia he transferred to this residence of the Persian Monarchs everything that was precious in the land, although the palace was already almost filled with treasures and costly materials. Strabo has further been quoted as mentioning that cotton grew in Susiana and was there manufactured into cloths, but although I have searched his chapters many times I can find no such statement. It is most probable, however, that before his time cotton did grow and was manufactured in Susiana, and that it was first introduced by the Macedonians. They certainly brought into culture there before the time of Strabo another valuable plant: for we have the distinct statement of the latter that “the vine did not grow in Susiana before the Macedonians planted it both there and at Babylon.”

Amidst the hurry of war and the rage for conquest Alexander always kept in view the future pacification of an invaded country; its products, therefore, were habitually ascertained and carefully noted, with a view to the increase of revenue and the development of commerce. But, beyond this, the great Macedonian conqueror, wherever he went, employed a numerous corps of scouts, and searchers, and men of science, to collect specimens of the curious animals, plants, and minerals to be found on the march. These he sent home from time to time to his great preceptor Aristotle, who was thus assisted to produce a work on Natural History which, for general accuracy of description and extent of knowledge, is a wonderful monument of scientific observation.

When by the refusal of his soldiers to proceed further than the banks of the Hyphasis (the modern Beyah), Alexander found himself obliged to yield to their wish to be led back to Persia, he determined to sail down the Indus to the ocean, and from its mouth to proceed by the Erythrean Sea to the Persian Gulf, that a communication by sea might be opened with India. His intention was that the valuable commodities of that country should thus be conveyed through the Persian Gulf to the interior parts of his Asiatic dominions, and that by the Arabian Gulf they should be carried to Alexandria (the site of which he had most judiciously selected), and thence distributed to the rest of the world.

With this object in view, he ordered a numerous fleet of boats and river-craft to be built and collected on the banks of the Hydaspes, at Bucephalia (either the modern Jhelum, or Jubalpore, some eighteen miles lower down the stream), and, when nearly two thousand vessels of various shape and size had been got together, he commenced his voyage down the Hydaspes to the Indus. The conduct of the flotilla was committed to Nearchus, an officer worthy of that important trust, though Alexander himself accompanied him in his navigation down the river. The army numbered a hundred and twenty thousand men and two hundred elephants. One third of the troops were embarked on the boats, whilst the remainder, marching in two columns, one on the right, and the other on the left side of the river, accompanied them in their progress. Retarded by various military operations on land, as well as by the slow advance of such a fleet as he conducted, Alexander did not reach the sea until more than nine months after the commencement of his journey. Having safely accomplished this arduous undertaking, he led the main body of his army back to Persia by land. The command of the fleet, with a considerable body of troops on board of it, remained with Nearchus, who, after a coasting voyage of seven months, brought it safely up the Persian Gulf into the Euphrates.

Alexander’s expedition into India was no less an intelligent exploration than a successful invasion, and the western world is more indebted than is generally understood to the original genius, conspicuous foresight, political wisdom, and indefatigable exertions of that remarkable man. It was from the memoirs of his officers that Europe derived its first authentic information concerning the climate, soil, inhabitants and productions of India, and amongst the last not the least beneficial to man was cotton.

Although Scylax of Caryandra, an emissary of Darius Hydaspes, had descended the Indus to the sea about a hundred and eighty years previously (B.C. 509), other nations had derived no benefit from his investigations. But his report of the fertility, high cultivation, and opulence of the country he had passed through inflamed his master’s greed, and made Darius impatient to become possessor of a territory so valuable. This he soon accomplished, and though his conquests seem not to have extended beyond the districts watered by the Indus, he levied a tribute from it which equalled in amount one-third of the whole revenue of the Persian Monarchy.

Until Alexander became master of Persia no commercial intercourse seems to have been carried on by sea between that country and India. The ancient rulers of Persia, induced by a peculiar precept of their religion which enjoined them to guard with the utmost care against the defilement of any of the “elements,” and also by a fear of foreign invasion, obstructed by artificial works near their mouths the navigation of the great rivers which gave access to the interior of the country. As their subjects, however, were no less desirous than the people around them of possessing the valuable productions and elegant manufactures of India, these latter were conveyed to all parts of their dominions by land carriage. The goods destined for the northern provinces were borne on camels from the banks of the Indus to those of the Oxus, down the stream of which they were carried to the Caspian Sea, and distributed, partly by land and partly by navigable rivers, through the different countries bounded on the one hand by the Caspian, and on the other by the Euxine, or Black Sea; whilst those of India intended for the southern and interior districts were transported by land from the Caspian Gates to some of the great rivers, by which they were dispersed through every part of the country. This was the ancient mode of intercourse with India, whilst the Persian Empire was governed by its native princes; and, as Robertson says, “it has been observed in every age that when any branch of commerce has got into a certain channel, although it may not be the best or most convenient one, it requires long time and persistent efforts to give it a different direction.”[38]

Alexander of Macedon was not a man likely to permit the existence of impediments in the way of that which he knew to be highly conducive to national progress and prosperity—namely, the expansion of commerce and facility of communication. On his return, therefore, from India to Susa, he, in person, surveyed the course of the Euphrates and Tigris, and gave directions for the removal of the cataracts and dams, which had so long rendered the upper waters of these rivers inaccessible from the sea. His wise plans and splendid schemes were cut short by his early death, B.C. 324; but his surviving generals, though they quarrelled with each other, did their best to carry out his policy and the measures which he had concerted with so much sagacity.

His successor, Seleucus, entertained so high an opinion of the advantages to be derived from commercial intercourse with India that he organized another expedition, which must have been very successful, though no particulars of it have come down to us. He also sent to Sandracottus, King of the Prasii, an ambassador, Megasthenes, who penetrated to Palebothra (the modern Allahabad), at the confluence of the Jumna and the Ganges.

Meanwhile Ptolemy Soter, another of Alexander’s generals, who had enjoyed his confidence and entered into his plans more thoroughly than any of his other officers, took possession of Egypt, and strove to secure for Alexandria the advantage of the trade with India. Some say that it was he who erected the lighthouse at the mouth of the harbour of Alexandria which was regarded as one of the seven wonders of the world, who built there the magnificent temple of Serapis, and who founded the celebrated library and museum for the benefit of learning and the cultivation of science.[39]

His son, Ptolemy Philadelphus, completed those works, and, further to attract the Indian trade to Alexandria, commenced to form a canal, one hundred and seventy-five feet wide, and forty-five feet deep, between Arsinoe (Suez) and the eastern branch of the Nile, by means of which the productions of India might be conveyed to Alexandria entirely by water. But this work was never finished, and as the navigation of the northern extremity of the Arabian Gulf (the Red Sea) was so difficult and dangerous as to be greatly dreaded, Ptolemy built a city, which he called Berenice, further down the west coast of that sea, about lat. 24°. This new city soon became the chief port of communication between Egypt and India. Goods landed there were carried by camels across the desert of Thebais to Coptos, a distance of about 320 English miles, and from there down the Nile to Alexandria, whence they were transhipped to the various countries on the Mediterranean.

Thus by the exploits and far-sighted policy of Alexander the Great were the then civilized nations of Europe made practically acquainted with calicoes, muslins, and other piece-goods—clothing materials which they had never previously seen, although probably for more than two thousand years these had been woven in the simple looms of India from the soft, white, “vegetable-lamb’s wool that grew on trees”; and had during that long period supplied the principal raiment of a population of many millions.

As the Persians had an unconquerable dislike of the sea, the seat of intercourse with India was the more easily established in Egypt, and it is remarkable how soon and how regularly the commerce with the East came to be carried on by the channel in which the sagacity of Alexander had destined it to flow.

The Egyptian merchants took on board their cargoes of Indian produce at Patala (now Tatta) on the lower Delta of the Indus, at Barygaza (now Baroche, on the Nerbuddah) and in the Gulf of Cambay, and probably also at Kurrachee and Surat. As their vessels were of small burden, and as they, themselves, though sufficiently acquainted with astronomy to make some use of the stars, had no knowledge of the mariner’s compass, the prudent merchantmen crept timidly along within sight of land, following the outline of every bay, and skirting the shores of Persia and Arabia and the western coast of Lower Egypt to Berenice. Though the course was tedious and the voyage prolonged, the traffic prospered, and was thus carried on for more than three centuries. When Egypt was conquered by Julius Cæsar, B.C. 30, and, after the battle of Actium, became a Roman province under Augustus, it continued undisturbed. The taste for luxury at Rome gave a new impetus to commerce with India, and at this time four hundred sailing craft were engaged in the trade.

About A.D. 50, an important discovery was made which greatly facilitated intercourse between Egypt and the East, and diminished the time occupied by the voyage. Hippalus, the commander of a vessel trading with India, noticed the periodical winds called the “monsoons,” or “trade-winds,” and how steadily they blew during one part of the year from the east, and during the other from the west. Having observed this to occur regularly every year, he ventured to relinquish the slow and circuitous coasting route, and stretched boldly from the mouth of the Arabian Gulf across the ocean, and was carried by the western monsoon to Musiris, on the Malabar coast. This was one of the greatest achievements in navigation in ancient history, and opened the best communication between East and West that was known for fourteen hundred years afterwards.

Arrian (who wrote A.D. 131) says that at that date Indian cottons of large width, fine cottons, muslins, plain and figured, and cotton for stuffing couches and beds, were landed at Aduli (the present Massowah), and that Barygaza was the port from which they were chiefly shipped.

The Romans also established an intercourse by land, by way of Palmyra (“Tadmor in the Wilderness”), which by means of this trade rose to great opulence; but even after the removal of the seat of government from Rome to Constantinople, in the year 329, the Roman Empire was still supplied with the productions of India by way of Egypt. The trade that might have been carried on between India and Constantinople by land was prevented by the Persians.

The Indo-Egyptian maritime traffic established by Alexander, and encouraged by Ptolemy Lagus and his son, prospered for nearly a thousand years. It survived the downfall of the Roman Empire, A.D. 476, and lasted until the conquest of Egypt by the Mahometans under Amru Benalas, the general of Caliph Omar, A.D. 634.

As no communication was carried on between Mahometans and Christians, the capture of Alexandria by the Saracens prevented the nations of Europe obtaining the products of India through Egypt, and this valuable route of international communication was abruptly stopped.

I have devoted some space to a description of the first maritime trade with India, established by the wisdom of Alexander, and suddenly arrested by Mahometan bigotry, because the history of that commerce is, more or less, the history of the cotton trade, and explains how the use of cotton and its progress westward were gradually developed and subsequently checked.

It will be convenient to make this date—the commencement of “the dark ages”—a halting-place from which to mark how far cotton and the fabrics made from it were appreciated by the nations who were chiefly benefited by the sea-carriage of Indian products in general.

The very ancient Egyptians were apparently unacquainted with cotton. At one time there was considerable discussion concerning the substance from which the swathing bandages of the mummies were woven, and some savants claimed to have discovered cotton amongst them. But the microscope quickly decided that question, for the character and appearance of the fibres of cotton and flax are so markedly different that any young microscopist may distinguish one from the other with ease. It was found that in every case these bandages were made of linen. Negative evidence to the same effect is furnished by the fact that no pictures or other similitude of the cotton plant has been found in Egyptian tombs, whereas accurate representations of flax occur, in its different stages of growth, harvest, and manufacture.[40]