The cotton being thus prepared, without any carding, it is spun by the women; the coarse yarn is spun on a beavy one-thread wheel, of teak-wood, and of the rudest carpentry

The finer yarn is spun with a metallic spindle, sometimes with and sometimes without a distaff; a bit of clay is attached as a weight to one end of the spindle, which is turned round with the left hand, whilst the cotton is supplied with the right; the thread is wound up on a small piece of wood. The spinster keeps her fingers dry by the use of a chalky powder. In this simple way the Indian women, whose sense of touch is most acute and delicate, produce yarns which are finer and far more tenacious than any of the machine-spun yarns of Europe.

The yarn, having been reeled and warped in the sim

I have been favoured by sir Charles Wilkins, the learned librarian of the East India Company, with a specimen of Dacca muslin, brought by himself from India in the year 1786, and presented to him by the principal of the Company's factory at Dacca, as the finest then made there. Like all Indian muslins, it has a yellowish hue, caused by imperfect bleaching. Though the worse for many years' exposure in a glass case, and the handling of visiters, it is of exquisite delicacy, softness, and transparency; yet the yarn of which it is woven, and of which sir Charles also brought a specimen, is not so fine as some which has been spun by machines in this country. The following minute, made by sir Joseph Banks on a portion of this yarn, twenty or thirty years since, appears at the India House in his own writing, together with a specimen of the muslin:

"The portion of skein which Mr. Wilkins gave to me weighed 34% grains: its length was 5 yards 7 inches, and it consisted of 196 threads. Consequently, its whole length was 1018 yards and 7 inches. This, with a small allowance for fractions, gives 29 yards to a grain, 203,000 to a pound averdupoise of 7000 grains; that is, 115 miles, 2 furlongs, and 60 yards."

Cotton yarn has been spun in England, making three hundred and fifty hanks to the lb. weight, each hank measuring 840 yards, and the whole forming a thread of 167 miles in length. This, however, must be regarded merely as showing how fine the cotton can possibly be spun by our machines, since no such yarn is or could be used in the making of muslins, or for any other purpose, in this country. The extreme of fineness to which yarns for muslins are ever spun in England is 250 hanks to the lb., which would form a thread measur

ing 119 miles; but it is very rarely indeed that finer yarn is used than 220 hanks to the lb., which is less fine than the specimen of Dacca muslin above mentioned. The Indian hand-spun yarn is softer than the mule-yarn of England, and the muslins made of the former are much more durable than those made of the latter. In point of appearance, however, the book-muslin of Glasgow is very superior to the Indian muslin, not only because it is better bleached, but because it is more evenly woven, and from yarn of uniform thickness, whereas the threads in the Indian fabric vary considerably.

It is probable that the specimen brought by sir Charles Wilkins, though the finest then made at the city of Dacca, is not equal to the most delicate muslins made in that neighbourhood in former times, or even in the present. The place called by the Rev. Mr. Ward Sonar-ga, and, by Mr. Walter Hamilton, Soonergong, a decayed city near Dacca, has been said to be unrivalled in its muslins. Mr. Ward's testimony has been quoted above. Mr. Ralph Fitch, an English traveller, in 1583, spoke of the same place when he said-" Sinnergan is a towne sixe leagues from Serrapore, where there is the best and finest cloth made of cotton that is in all India."* Mr. Hamilton says-" Soonergong is now dwindled down to an inconsiderable village. By Abul Fazel, in 1582, it is celebrated for the manufacture of a beautiful cloth, named cassas (cossaes,) and the fabrics it still produces justify to the present generation its ancient renown." But it seems that there has been a great decline in the manufacture of the finest

Hakluyt's Voyages, vol. ii. p. 390 ; edit 1809.

A Geographical, Statistical, and Historical Description of Hindostan, by Walter Hamilton, Esq. vol. i. p. 187—(1820.)

muslins, which is both stated and accounted for by Mr. Hamilton in the following passage on the district of Dacca Jelulpoor:

"Plain muslins, distinguished by different names, according to the fineness or closeness of the texture, as well as flowered, striped, or chequered muslins, are fabricated chiefly in this district, where a species of cotton named the banga grows, necessary, although not of a very superior quality, to form the stripes of the finest muslins, for which the city of Dacca has been so long celebrated. The northern parts of Benares furnish both plain and flowered muslins, which are not ill adapted for common use, though incapable of sustaining any competition with the beautiful and inimitable fabrics of Dacca.

"The export of the above staple articles has much decreased, and the art of manufacturing some of the finest species of muslins is in danger of being lost, the orders for them being so few that many of the families who possess by hereditary instruction the art of fabricating them have desisted, on account of the difficulty they afterwards experience in disposing of them. This decline may partly be accounted for from the utter stagnation of demand in the upper provinces since the downfall of the imperial government, prior to which these delicate and beautiful fabrics were in such estimation, not only at the court of Delhi, but among all classes of the high nobility in India, as to render it difficult to supply the demand. Among more recent causes also may be adduced the French revolution, the degree of perfection to which this peculiar manufacture has lately been brought in Great Britain, the great diminution in the Company's investment, and the advance in the price of cotton."

With respect to the peculiar species of cotton of which the Dacca muslins are made, the following statement was given to a committee of the House of Commons, in 1830-31, by Mr. John Crawfurd, for many years in the service of the East India Company, and author of the "History of the Indian Archipelago:"

"There is a fine variety of cotton in the neighbourhood of Dacca, from which I have reason to believe the fine muslins of Dacca are produced, and probably to the accidental discovery of it is to be attributed the rise of this singular manufacture; it is cultivated by the natives alone, not at all known in the English market, nor, as far as I am aware, in that of Calcutta. Its growth extends about forty miles along the banks of the Megna, and about three miles inland. I consulted Mr. Colebrook respecting the Dacca cotton, and had an opportunity of perusing the manuscripts of the late Dr. Roxburgh, which contain an account of it; he calls it a variety of the common herbaceous annual cotton of India, and states that it is longer in the staple, and affords the material from which the Dacca muslins have been always made."

India produces several varieties of cotton, both of the herbaceous and the tree kinds. Marco Polo mentions that "cotton is produced (in Guzerat) in large

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quantities from a tree that is about six yards in height, "and bears during twenty years; but the cotton taken "from trees of this age is not adapted for spinning, "but only quilting. Such, on the contrary, as is taken "from trees of twelve years old, is suitable for muslins "and other manufactures of extraordinary fineness.' Sir John Mandeville, on the other hand, who travelled in the fourteenth century, fifty years later than Polo, mentions the annual herbaceous cotton as cultivated in India: he says" In many places the seed of the cot"ton, (cothon,) which we call tree-wool, is sown every

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year, and there spring up from it copses of low shrubs, "on which this wool grows."t Forbes also, in his Oriental Memoirs, thus describes the herbaceous cotton of Guzerat:-"The cotton shrub, which grows to the

Book iii, chap. 29.

+ Hakluyt's Voyages, vol. ii. p. 169.