replace it by one of a finer texture. The cotton used for the finest thread, was grown in the immediate neighborhood of Dacca, more especially about Sunergong. Its fibre is too short, however, to admit of its being worked up by any except that most wonderful of all machines—the human hand. The art of making the very fine muslin fabrics is now lost—and a pity it is that it should be so.
In 1820, a resident of Dacca, on a special order received from China, procured the manufacture of two pieces of muslin, each ten yards long by one wide, and weighing ten and a half sicca rupees.—The price of each piece was 100 sicca rupees. In 1822, the same individual received a second commission for two similar pieces, from the same quarter; but the parties who had supplied him on the former occasion had died in the mean time, and he was unable to execute the commission.
The annual investment, called the "Malbus Khás," for the royal wardrobe at Delhi, absorbed a great part of the finest fabrics in former times: the extreme beauty of some of these muslins, was sufficiently indicated by the names they bore: such as, "Abrowan," running water; "Siebnem," evening dew, &c. The cotton manufacture has not yet arrived at anything like this perfection with us, and probably never will.[1]*
- ↑ The manufacture of fine muslin, was attempted both in Lancashire and at Glasgow, about the year 1780, with weft spun by the jenny. The attempt failed, owing to the coarseness of the yarn. Even with Indian weft, muslins could not be made to compete with those of the East. But when the mule was brought into general use, in 1785, both weft and warp were produced sufficiently fine for muslins; and so quickly did the weaver avail himself of the improvement in the yarn, that no less than 500,000 pieces of muslin were manufactured in Great Britain in the year 1787. In a "Report of the Select Committee of the Court of Directors of the East India Company upon the subject of the Cotton Manufacture of this Country," made in the year 1793, it is said, that "every shop offers British muslins for sale equal in appearance, and of more elegant patterns than those of India, for one-fourth, or perhaps more than one-third, less in price. "Muslin began to be made nearly at the same time at Bolton, at Glasgow, and at Paisley, each place adopting the peculiar description of fabric which resembled most those goods it had been accustomed to manufacture; and, in consequence of this judicious distribution at first, each place has continued to maintain a superiority in the production of its own article. Jaconets, both coarse and fine, but of a stout fabric, checked and striped muslins, and other articles of the heavier description of this branch, are manufactured in Bolton, and its neigh-*
