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eremez .

The “ Barometz,” or “Tartarian Lamb.”.

After Joa?ines Zahn.

THE VEGETABLE LAMB

OF

TART ARY;

A Curious Fable of the Cotton Plant.

TO WHICH IS ADDED

A SKETCH OF THE HISTORY OF COTTON AND

THE COTTON TRADE.

r.v

HENRY LEE, F.L.s., f.g.s., F.z.s.,

SOMETIME NATURALIST OF THE BRIGHTON AQUARIUM,

AND

AUTHOR OF ‘ THE OCTOPUS, OR THE DEVIL-FISH OF FICTION AND OF FACT,’
‘SEA MONSTERS UNMASKED,’ ‘ SEA FABLES EXPLAINED,’ ETC.

ILLUSTRATED.

LONDON:

SAMPSON LOW, MARSTON, SEARLE, & RIVINGTON,

CROWN BUILDINGS, 18S, FLEET STREET.

1887.

All Rights reserved ■

LONDON :

Printed by william clowes and sons, limited,

STAMFORD STREET AND CHARING CROSS.

CONTENTS.

-*■

PAGE

CHAPTER I.

The Fable and its Interpretation . i

CHAPTER II.

The History of Cotton and its Introduction into Europe . 63

Appendix

97

Index

107

A 2

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

FIG.

The “Barometz,” or “Tartarian Lamb.” — After Joannes
Zahn ......... Frontispiece

1. — The Vegetable Lamb Plant. — After Sir John Mandeville

2. — Portrait of the “Barometz,” or “Scythian Lamb.” —

After Claude Duret ....... k

3. — Adam and Eve admiring the Plants in the Garden of

Eden. The “Vegetable Lamb” in the background. —
Fac-simile of the Frontispiece of Parkinson's ‘ ‘ Paradisus ”

4. — Rhizome of a Fern, shaped by the Chinese to represent

A TAN-COLOURED DOG, AND LAID BEFORE THE ROYAL

Society by Sir Hans Sloane as a Specimen of the
“Barometz,” or “Tartarian Lamb.” — From the ‘ Philo¬
sophical Transactions ’ vol. xx., p. 861

5. — Rough model of a tan-coloured Dog , shaped by the

Chinese from the Rhizome of a Fern, and submitted
to the Royal Society by Dr. Breyn as a Specimen of
the “Scythian Vegetable Lamb,” or Borametz. — Fro7n
the ‘ Philosophical Transactions,’ No. 390 . . . .

6. — The “Borametz,” or “Scythian Lamb.” — From De la Croix’s

‘ Connubia Florum

I’AGE

3

9

19

25

3i

37

61

7. — A Cotton-pod

PREFACE.

THE fable of the existence of a mysterious “ plant-
animal ” variously entitled “ The Vegetable Lamb of Tar¬
tary" “ The Scythian Lamb," and “ The Barometz ,” or
“ Borametz is one of the curious myths of the Middle Ages
with which I have been long acquainted. Until the year
1883, not having given serious thought to it, or made it a
subject of critical examination, I had been content to accept
as correct the explanation of it now universally adopted ;
namely, that it originated from certain little lamb-like toy
figures ingeniously constructed by the Chinese from the rhi¬
zome and frond-stems of a tree-fern, which, from its identifi¬
cation with the object of the fable, has received the name of
Dicksonia Barometz. But during my researches in the
works of ancient writers when preparing the manuscript of
my two books, * Sea Monsters Unmasked ,’ and ‘ Sea
Fables Explained I came upon passages of old authors
which convinced me that these toy “ lambs ” made from
ferns by the Chinese had no more connexion with the story
of “ The Vegetable Lamb ” than the artificial mermaids so
cleverly constructed by the Japanese were the cause and
origin of the ancient and world-wide belief in mermaids.
Subsequent investigations have confirmed this opinion.

I have found that all of these old myths which I have
been able to trace to their source have originated in a
perfectly true statement of some curious and interesting

X

PREFA CE.

fact ; which statement has been so garbled and distorted,
so misrepresented and perverted in repetition by numerous
writers, that in the course of centuries its original meaning
has been lost, and a monstrous fiction has been substituted
for it, “Truth lies at the bottom of a well,” says the adage ;
and in searching for the origin of these old myths and
legends, the deeper we can dive down into the past the
greater is the probability of our discovering the truth con¬
cerning them. To obtain a clue to the ide'ntity of “ The
Scythian Lamb ” we must consult the pages of historians
and philosophers who lived and wrote from eighteen to
sixteen centuries before Sir John Mandeville published his
version of the story ; and, having there found set before us
the real “ Vegetable Lamb ” in all its truthful simplicity
and beauty, we shall be able to recognise its form and
features under the various disguises it was made to assume
by the wonder-mongers of the Middle Ages.

I venture to believe that the reader who will kindly
follow my argument (p. 42, et seq.) will agree with me that
the rumour which spread from Western Asia all over
Europe, and was a subject of discussion by learned men
during many centuries, of the existence of “ a tree bearing
fruit, or seed-pods, which when they ripened and burst open
were seen to contain little lambs, of whose soft white fleeces
Eastern people wove material for their clothing,” was a plant
of far higher importance to mankind than the paltry toy
animals made by the Chinese from the root of a fern, of
which gew-gaws only four specimens are known to have
been brought to this country. It seems to me clear and
indisputable that the rumour referred to the cotton-pod,
and originated in the first introduction of cotton and the
fabrics woven from it into Eastern Europe.

It will be seen that the explanation of the process by

PREFACE.

xi

which the truthful report of a remarkable fact was in time
perverted into the detailed history of an absurd fiction is
very easy and intelligible.

As this little book was originally intended for publication,
like its predecessors before-mentioned, as a hand-book in
connection with the Literary Department of the South
Kensington Exhibitions, I have treated in a separate
chapter of the history of cotton, its use by ancient races in
Asia, Africa, and America, and its gradual introduction
amongst the nations of Europe. The various stages of its
progress Westward were so distinctly and intimately de¬
pendent on many remarkable events in the world’s history,
by which its advance was alternately retarded and facili¬
tated, that the annals of the “ vegetable wool ” which
holds so important a place amongst the manufacturing
industries of Great Britain are hardly less romantic than the
fable of “ The Vegetable Lamb" which was its forerunner.

Henry Lee.

Savage Club.

May, 1887.

THE

VEGETABLE LAMB OF TARTARY

A CURIOUS FABLE OF THE
COTTON PLANT.

-»o^e>< c

CHAPTER I.

THE FABLE AND ITS INTERPRETATION.

AMONGST the curious myths of the Middle Ages none were
more extravagant and persistent than that of the “ Vege¬
table Lamb of Tartary,” known also as the “ Scythian
Lamb,” and the “Borametz,” or “Barometz,” the latter
title being derived from a Tartar word signifying “a lamb.”
This “ lamb ” was described as being at the same time both
a true animal and a living plant. According to some
writers this composite “plant-animal” was the fruit of a
tree which sprang from a seed like that of a melon, or
gourd ; and when the fruit or seed-pod of this tree was fully
ripe it burst open and disclosed to view within it a little
lamb, perfect in form, and in every way resembling an
ordinary lamb naturally born. This remarkable tree was
supposed to grow in the territory of “the Tartars of the
East,” formerly called “ Scythia ” ; and it was said that

B

2

THE VEGETABLE LAMB OF TART ARY.

from the fleeces of these “ tree-lambs,” which were of sur¬
passing whiteness, the natives of the country where they
were found wove materials for their garments and “ head¬
dress.” In the course of time another version of the story
was circulated, in which the lamb was not described as
being the fruit of a tree, but as being a living lamb
attached by its navel to a short stem rooted in the earth.
The stem, or stalk, on which the lamb was thus suspended
above the ground was sufficiently flexible to allow the
animal to bend downward, and browze on the herbage
within its reach. When all the grass within the length of
its tether had been consumed the stem withered and the
lamb died. This plant-lamb was reported to have bones,
blood, and delicate flesh, and to be a favourite food of
wolves, though no other carnivorous animal would attack it.
Many other details were given concerning it, which will be
found mentioned in the following pages. This legend met
with almost universal credence from the thirteenth to the
seventeenth centuries, and, even then, only gave place to an
explanation of it as absurd and delusive as itself. Follow¬
ing the outline sketched in the preface, I shall, in this
chapter, lay before the reader the story of the “ Barometz ”
or “ Vegetable Lamb,” as related by various writers, and
shall then give my reasons for assigning to the fable an
interpretation very different from that which has been
hitherto accepted as the true one.

The story of a wonderful plant which bore living lambs for
its fruit, and grew in Tartary, seems to have been first
brought into public notice in England in the reign of Edward
III., by Sir John Mandeville, the “ Knyght of Ingelond that
was y bore in the toun of Seynt Albans, and travelide
aboute in the worlde in many diverse countreis, to se
mervailes and customes of countreis, and diversiteis of

Fig. i. — The Vegetable Lamb Plant.

After Sir John Mnndcville.

This plate illustrates that version of the Fable by which the
“Vegetable Lamb ” is represented as contained within a fruit, or
seed-pod, which, when ripe, bursts open, and discloses the little
lamb within it.

B 2

.

'

'

r

THE FABLE AND ITS INTERPRETATION .

5

folkys, and diverse shap of men and of beistis.” In the
26th chapter of the book in which he “ wrot and telleth
all the mervaile that he say,” and which he dedicated to
the King, he treats of “ the Countreis and Yles that ben
be3ond the Lond of Cathay, and of the Frutes there ” ; and
amongst the curiosities he met with in the dominions of
the “ Cham ” of Tartary he mentions the following : —

“ Now schalle I seye 30U semyngly of Countrees and Yles
that ben be3onde the Countrees that I have spoken of.
Wherefore I seye you in passynge be the Lond of Cathaye
toward the high Ynde, and towards Bacharye, men passen
be a Kyngdom that men clepen Caldilhe : that is a fair
Contree. And there growethe a maner of Fruyt, as though
it weren Gowrdes : and whan thei ben rype men kutten
hem ato, and men fynden with inne a lytylle Best, in
Flesche, in Bon and Blode, as though it were a lytylle
Lomb with outen Wolle. And Men eten both the Frut
and the Best ; and that is a great Marveylle. Of that Frute
I have eaten ; alle thoughe it were wondirfulle, but that I
knowe wel that God is marveyllous in his Werkes.”*

Sir John Mandeville appears to have never previously
heard of this strange plant, but reports of its existence
under various phases may be traced back, as we shall
presently see, to a date at least eighteen hundred years
earlier than that of his mention of it. As it is in the works
of these older writers that we shall find the long-sought key
of the mystery, we will set them aside for the present and
follow the growth and dissemination of the fable.

Claude Duret, of Moulins, who, in his ‘ Histoire
Admirable des Plantes (1605)/ devotes to it a chapter
entitled “ The Boramets of Scythia, or Tartary, true

* ‘The Voiage and Travaile of Sir John Maundevile, Knt.’ See
Appendix A.

6

THE VEGETABLE LAMB OF TARTARY .

Zoophytes or plant-animals ; that is to say, plants living
and sensitive like animals,” therein says : —

“ I remember to have read some time ago in a very
ancient Hebrew book entitled in Latin the Talmud Ieroso-
limitanum , and written by a Jewish Rabbi Jochanan,
assisted by others, in the year of salvation 436, that a cer¬
tain personage named Moses Chusensis (he being a native
of Ethiopia) affirmed, on the authority of Rabbi Simeon,
that there was a certain country of the earth which bore a
zoophyte, or plant-animal, called in the Hebrew ‘ Jeduahl
It was in form like a lamb, and from its navel grew a stem
or root by which this zoophyte or plant-animal was fixed,
attached, like a gourd, to the soil below the surface of the
ground, and, according to the length of its stem or root, it
devoured all the herbage which it was able to reach within
the circle of its tether. The hunters who went in search of
this creature were unable to capture or remove it until they
had succeeded in cutting the stem by well-aimed arrows or
darts, when the animal immediately fell prostrate to the
earth and died. Its bones being placed with certain
ceremonies and incantations in the mouth of one desiring
to foretell the future, he was instantly seized with a spirit
of divination, and endowed with the gift of prophecy.”

As I was unable to find in the Latin translation of the
Talmud of Jerusalem the passage mentioned by Claude
Duret, and was anxious to ascertain whether any reference
to this curious legend existed in the Talmudical books, I
sought the assistance of learned members of the Jewish
community, and, amongst them, of the Rev. Dr. Hermann
Adler, Chief Rabbi Delegate of the United Congregations
of the British Empire. He most kindly interested himself
in the matter, and wrote to me as follows : —

“ It affords me much gratification to give you the infor-

THE FABLE AND ITS INTERPRETATION.

7

mation you desire on the Borametz. In the Mishna Kilaim ,
chap. viii. § 5 (a portion of the Talmud), the passage
occurs : — ‘Creatures called Adne Hasadeh (literally, “ lords
of the field ”) are regarded as beasts.’ There is a variant
reading, — Abne Hasadeh (stones of the field). A com¬
mentator, Rabbi Simeon, of Sens (died about 1235), writes
as follows on this passage: — ‘It is stated in the Jerusalem
Talmud that this is a human being of the mountains : it
lives by means of its navel : if its navel be cut it cannot
live. I have heard in the name of Rabbi Meir, the son
of Kallonymos of Speyer, that this is the animal called
‘ Jeduah .’ This is the ‘ Jedoui ’ mentioned in Scripture

(lit. wizard , Leviticus xix. 31) ; with its bones witchcraft
is practised. A kind of large stem issues from a root
in the earth on which this animal, called ‘ Jadual grows,
just as gourds and melons. Only the ‘ Jadna ’ has, in
all respects, a human shape, in face, body, hands, and
feet. By its navel it is joined to the stem that issues from
the root. No creature can approach within the tether of
the stem, for it seizes and kills them. Within the tether of
the stem it devours the herbage all around. When they
want to capture it no man dares approach it, but they tear
at the stem until it is ruptured, whereupon the animal dies.’
Another commentator, Rabbi Obadja of Berbinoro, gives
the same explanation, only substituting — ‘ They aim
arrows at the stem until it is ruptured,’ &c. The author of an
ancient Hebrew work, Maase Tobia (Venice, 1705), gives an
interesting description of this animal. In Part IV. c. 10,
page 786, he mentions the Borametz found in Great Tartary.
He repeats the description of Rabbi Simeon, and adds what
he has found in ‘A New Work on Geography,’ namely,
that ‘the Africans (sic) in Great Tartary, in the province of
Sambulala, are enriched by means of seeds like the seeds of

8

THE VEGETABLE LAMB OF TARTAR V.

gourds, only shorter in size, which grow and blossom like a
stem to the navel of an animal which is called Borametz in
their language, i.e. * Iambi on account of its resembling a
lamb in all its limbs, from head to foot ; its hoofs are cloven,
its skin is soft, its wool is adapted for clothing, but it has
no horns, only the hairs of its head, which grow, and are
intertwined like horns. Its height is half a cubit and more.
According to those who speak of this wondrous thing, its
taste is like the flesh of fish, its blood as sweet as honey,
and it lives as long as there is herbage within reach of the
stem, from which it derives its life. If the herbage is de¬
stroyed or perishes, the animal also dies away. It has rest
from all beasts and birds of prey, except the wolf, which
seeks to destroy it.’ The author concludes by expressing
his belief, that this account of the animal having the shape
of a lamb is more likely to be true than that it is of human
form.”

We have an interesting record of another journey into
Tartary, undertaken almost simultaneously with that of Sir
John Mandeville, by Odoricus of Friuli, a Minorite friar
belonging to the monastery of Utina, near Padua. The
exact date of his departure on his travels is not mentioned,
but he returned home in 1330, and the history of his adven¬
tures and observations* was written in the month of May of
that year — thus taking precedence by about thirty years of
the narrative of the old English traveller.

Odoricus, describing his visit to the country of the
“ Grand Can,” says : — “ I heard of another wonder from
persons worthy of credit ; namely, that in a province of the

* ‘The Journall of Frier Odoricus of Friuli, one of the order of the
Minorites, concerning strange things which he saw amongst the
Tartars of the East.’ — ‘ Hakluyt Collection of Early Voyages,’ vol. ii.
1809. See Appendix B.

THE FABLE AND ITS INTERPRETATION.

ii

said Can, in which is the mountain of Capsius * (the
province is called * Kalor ’), there grow gourds, which,
when they are ripe, open, and within them is found a little
beast like unto a young lamb, even as I myself have heard
reported that there stand certain trees upon the shore of
the Irish Sea bearing fruits like unto a gourd, which at a
certain time of the year do fall into the water and become
birds called Bernacles ; and this is true.”

In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the “ Scythian
Lamb ” was made a subject of investigation and argu¬
ment by some of the most celebrated writers of that period.

Fortunio Liceti, Professor of Philosophy at Padua,
writing in 1 5 1 8,f gives his complete credence to the story
of the little beast like a lamb found within a fruit-pod
when it bursts from over-ripeness ; and besides the above
passage from Odoricus quotes another, by which it would
appear that the worthy friar afterwards himself saw this
botanical curiosity, and described it as being “ as white as
snow.” I have been unable to find this paragraph irf the
Hakluyt edition of Odoricus’s travels.

Juan Eusebio Nieremberg, however, in his ‘ Historia
Natures' (Antwerp, 1605), also quotes these two passages,
and in exactly the same words. He probably copied them
from Liceti, and not from the original.

Sigismund, Baron von Herberstein, who, in 1517 and
1526, was the ambassador of the Emperors Maximilian I.
and Charles V. to the “ Grand Czard, or Duke of Muscovy,”
in his ‘ Notes on Russia,’ t gives further details of this

* Probably an error of transcription for “ Caspius.” The mountain
of Caspius (now Kasbin) is about eighty miles due south of the Caspian
Sea, and in Persian territory, near Teheran.

t ‘ De Spontaneo Viventium Ortu] lib. 3, cap. 45.

X 1 Rerum Muscoviticarum Commentarii 1549. See Appendix C.

12

THE VEGETABLE LAMB OF TARTARY.

“ vegetable-animal.” He writes : — “ In the neighbourhood
of the Caspian Sea, between the rivers Volga and Jaick,
formerly dwelt the kings of the Zavolha, certain Tartars, in
whose country is found a wonderful and almost incredible
curiosity, of which Demetrius Danielovich, a person in high
authority, gave me the following account ; namely, that his
father, who was once sent on an embassy by the Duke of
Muscovy to the Tartar king of the country referred to,
whilst he was there, saw and remarked, amongst other
things, a certain seed like that of a melon, but rather
rounder and longer, from which, when it was set in the
earth, grew a plant resembling a lamb, and attaining to a
height of about two and a half feet, and which was called
in the language of the country ‘ Borametz,’ or ‘ the little
Lamb.’ It had a head, eyes, ears, and all other parts of
the body, as a newly-born lamb. He also stated that it
had an exceedingly soft wool, which was frequently used
for the manufacturing of head-coverings. Many persons
also affirmed to me that they had seen this wool. Further,
he told me that this plant, if plant it should be called, had
blood, but not true flesh : that, in place of flesh, it had a
substance similar to the flesh of the crab, and that its hoofs
were not horny, like those of a lamb, but of hairs brought
together into the form of the divided hoof of a living lamb.
It was rooted by the navel in the middle of the belly, and
devoured the surrounding herbage and grass, and lived as
long as that lasted ; but when there was no more within its
reach the stem withered, and the lamb died. It was of so
excellent a flavour that it was the favourite food of wolves
and other rapacious animals. For myself,” adds the Baron,
“although I had previously regarded these Borametz as
fabulous, the accounts of it were confirmed to me by so
many persons worthy of credence that I have thought it

THE FABLE AND ITS INTERPRETATION. 13

right to describe it ; and this with the less hesitation
because I was told by Guillaume Postel,* a man of much
learning, that a person named Michel, interpreter of the
Turkish and Arabic languages to the Republic of Venice,
assured him that he had seen brought to Chalibontis (now
Karaboghaz), on the south-eastern shore of the Caspian Sea,
from Samarcand and other districts lying towards the
south, the very soft and delicate wool of a certain plant
used by the Mussulmans as padding for the small caps
which they wear on their shaven heads, and also as a
protection for their chests. He said, however, that he had
not seen the plant, nor knew its name, except that it was
called ‘ Smarcandeos,’ and was a zoophyte, or plant-animal.
The numerous descriptions given to him,” he added,
“ differed so little that he was induced to believe that there
was more truthfulness in this matter than he had supposed,
and to accept it as a fact redounding to the glory of the
Sovereign Creator, to whom all things are possible.”

Shortly after the publication of the above narrative by
Sigismund von Herberstein, and probably in allusion to it,
Girolamo Cardano, of Pavia, carefully discussed the phe¬
nomenon in question in his work ‘ De Rerum Naturd / f
printed at Niirnberg in 15 57. He endeavoured to expose
the absurdity of the statements made concerning this
“ animal-plant,” and explained the physical impossibility of
its existence in the manner described. He argued that if it
had blood it must have a heart, and that the soil in which
a plant grows is not fitted to supply a heart with movement
and vital heat. He also pointed out that embryo animals,
especially, require warmth for their development from the

* Author of L Liber de Causis , sen de Principiis et Originibus
Natures] &c.

f Lib. vi. cap. 22.

i4

THE VEGETABLE LAMB OF TARTARY.

ovum, which they could not obtain if raised from a seed
planted in the earth, demonstrating clearly enough that no
warm-blooded animal could exist thus organically fastened
to the earth. In reply, however, to a possible question sug¬
gested by himself, why there should be no plant-animal on
land, seeing that there are zoophytes in the sea, he, with the
weakness and indecision which were innate in his character,
admitted that “ where the atmosphere was thick and dense
there might, perhaps, be a plant having sensation, and also
imperfect flesh, such as that of mollusks and fishes.”

This weak point in his argument laid him open to the
criticism of his relentless enemy, Julius Caesar Scaliger.
Always on the watch to wound and harass Cardano with
cutting satire and irritating gibes, this caustic persecutor
lost no time in making his attack. In one of his “ Exer-
citationes ”* he thus personally addressed the object of his
sneering disparagement : —

“ You may regard as beyond ridicule this wonderful
Tartar plant. The most renowned of the Tartar hordes of
the present day, by its reputation, its antiquity, and its
nobility, is that of the Zavolha. These people sow a seed
like that of the melon, but rather smaller, from which
springs and grows out of the earth a plant which they call
‘ Borametz,’ i.e. ‘ the Lamb.’ This plant grows to the
height of three feet in the likeness of a real lamb, having
feet, hoofs, ears, and a head perfect with the exception of
horns, instead of which the plant has hairs in the form of
horns. Its skin is soft and delicate, and is used in Tartary
for head-gear. The internal pulp is said to be like the
flesh of the cray-fish, and to have an agreeable flavour ;

* ‘ Exotericarum Exercitationum ,’ lib. xv., “ De Subtilitate ” ; ad
Hieronymum Car daman Exercit. 181, cap. 29. Frankfort, 1557. See
Appendix D.

THE FABLE AND ITS INTERPRETATION.

15

but if an incision be made, real blood flows from it. The
root or stalk which rises from the earth is attached to the
navel of the lamb, and (which is more remarkable) whilst
the plant is surrounded with herbage it lives as does a
lamb, but as soon as it has consumed all within its reach it
withers and dies. This does not happen by the arrival of
the plant at any definite period of its growth, for it has
been found by experiment that if the grass around it be
removed it perishes. Another most curious circumstance
connected with it is that wolves will eat it with avidity,
though no other carnivorous animals will attack it. This,”
says Scaliger, still apostrophizing Cardano, “ is merely a
little sauce and seasoning to your allusion to the fable of
the Lamb ; but I would like to know from you how four
distinct legs and their feet can be produced from one
stem.”

It is very remarkable that this dissertation of Scaliger,
which is really a keen satire on Cardano, and a sarcastic
repetition of his version of the fable with ironical comments
thereon, has been almost invariably taken as serious, and
regarded as an expression of his entire belief in the
“ Scythian Lamb,” as described. Of all subsequent writers
on the subject, Deusingius * seems to have been the only
one who clearly perceived Scaliger’s intention and meaning.
Hence, many profound believers in the myth have claimed
as their champion one who would have derided them for
their credulity.

* Antonius Deusingius, Professor of Medicine, and Rector of the
University of Groningen, in his ‘ Fasciculus Dissertationum Selec-
torum ,’ p. 598, printed in 1660, declares his own utter disbelief in this
animal-vegetable monstrosity, and after quoting Scaliger, thus writes

of him : — “ Hcec equidem Scaliger , qui tamen ne serio historiam narrare
credatur quam ipse reverapro fabulosa habet , nequaquam vero approbate
ut perperam de eo refert SennertP — Hyp. Physic. 5, cap. 8.

1,6

1HE VEGETABLE LAMB OF TART ARY.

Claude Duret, for example, whose implicit faith in the
marvellous zoophyte nothing could shake, quotes verbatim
in its defence the remarks of “ le grand Jules Cesar
Scaliger,” and asks * triumphantly, —

“ Who cannot see plainly that Cardano, after having long
doubted, and after having adduced philosophical arguments
drawn from the works of Aristotle and other eminent
writers, felt himself obliged and condemned to confess that
in a place filled with heavy and dense air (such as is
Tartary) the Borametz — true plant-animals — might exist
as described, as well as sponges, ‘ sea-nettles,’ and ‘ sea-
lungs,’ which every one knows are true zoophytes, or
animal-plants.”

After this amusing assumption that the air of Tartary
possesses the “weight” and “density” necessary for the
production of plant-animals, Duret quotes from Sir John
Mandeville’s book in the language in which it was
originally written — the Romanic — the passage which I
have extracted from the old English version of the enter¬
prising knight’s ‘ Voiage and Travailes,’ and also cites, in
confirmation of the prodigy, the account given of it by the
Baron Von Herberstein. He then strongly expresses his
own belief that —

“ Of all the strange and marvellous trees, shrubs, plants
and herbs which Nature, or, rather, God himself, has pro¬
duced, or ever will produce in this Universe, there will
never be seen anything so worthy of admiration and con¬
templation as these ‘ Borametz ’ of Scythia, or Tartary, —
plants which are also animals, and which browze and eat
as quadrupeds. . . If I did not entirely believe this I would
denounce it as fabulous, instead of accepting it as a fact ;
but those who are in the habit of daily studying good and

* ‘ Histoire admirable dcs Plantes p. 322.

THE FABLE AND ITS INTERPRETATION.

i7

rare books, printed and in manuscript, and who are endowed
with great wisdom and understanding, know that there is
no impossibility in Nature, i.e. God himself, to whom be
all the honour and glory ! ”

Besides the authors already quoted, and others who
merely copied the narratives of their predecessors, Guillaume
de Saluste, the Sieur du Bartas, accepted as authentic the
story of the Vegetable Lamb. In his poem “ La Semaine
published in 1578, in which the first few days of the
existence of all terrestrial things are described reverently
and with considerable power, he represents this plant as
one of those which excited the astonishment of the newly-
created Adam as he wandered on the first day of the second
week through the Garden of Eden, the earthly Paradise in
which he had been placed.

“ Or, confus, il se perd dans les tournoyements,

EmbrouilEes erreurs, courbez desvoyements,

Conduits virevoultez, et sentes desloyales
D’un Dedale infiny qui comprend cent Dedales,

Clos non de romarins dextrement cizelez
En hommes, my-chevaux, en courserots seelez,

En escaillez oyseaux, en baDnes cornues,

Et mille autres fagons de bestes incogneues,

Ains de vrays animaux en la terre plantez,

Humant Pair des poulmons, et d’herbes alimentez,

Tels que les Boramets, qui chez les Scythes naissent
D’une graine menues, et des plantes repaissent ;

Bien que du corps, des yeux, de la bouche, et du nez,

I Is semblent des moutons qui sont naguieres naiz.

I Is le seroient du vray, si dans Palme poictrine
De terre ils n’enfongoient une vive ragine
Oui tient a leur nombril, et tombe le meme jour
Ouils ont broutte le foin qui croissoit k l’entour,

O, merveilleux effect de dextre divine,

La plante a chair et sang, l’animal a ragine,

La plante comme en rond de soymeme se meut,

L’animal a des pieds, et si marcher ne peut :

C

i8

THE VEGETABLE LAMB OF TARTARV.

La plante est sans rameaux, sans fruict, et sans feuillage,
L’animal sans amour, sans sexe, et vif lignage ;

La plante a belles dents, paist son ventre aflame
Du fourrage voisin, l’animal est seme.”

Joshua Sylvester, the admiring translator of Du Bartas,*
gives the following version of the above lines : —

“ Musing, anon through crooked walks he wanders,

Round winding rings, and intricate meanders.

False-guiding paths, doubtful, beguiling, strays,

And right-wrong errors of an endless maze ;

Nor simply hedged with a single border
Of rosemary cut out with curious order
In Satyrs, Centaurs, Whales, and half-men-horses,

And thousand other counterfeited corses ;

But with true beasts, fast in the ground still sticking
Feeding on grass, and th’ airy moisture licking,

Such as those Borametz in Scythia bred
Of slender seeds, and with green fodder fed ;

Although their bodies, noses, mouths, and eyes,

Of new-yeaned lambs have full the form and guise,

And should be very lambs, save that for foot
Within the ground they fix a living root
Which at their navel grows, and dies that day
That they have browzed the neighbouring grass away.

Oh ! wondrous nature of God only good,

The beast hath root, the plant hath flesh and blood.

The nimble plant can turn it to and fro,

The nummed beast can neither stir nor goe,

The plant is leafless, branchless, void of fruit,

The beast is lustless, sexless, fireless, mute :

The plant with plants his hungry paunch doth feede,

Th’ admired beast is sowen a slender seed.”

About the middle of the seventeenth century very little
belief in the story of the “ Scythian Lamb ” remained
amongst men of letters, although it continued to be a

* 1 Du Bartas : His Divine Weekes and Workes, translated and
dedicated to the King’s most excellent Maiestie by Joshua Sylvester,
London. 1584.’

J^^PARADISfv^IN SOLE

Patadifus Tcrrc^tris .

'(fen gf afCJortS gf^fcafmt'.^fforvers' wfii

OUtL>

$jttyCitK ojjri ■WiC' pcrmiitto Sc ,

jL JCtt fc/ien.^ of off -maimer offi
Jor ■m-catc or fa life rpfca a>

Orenarcf of off forte of fruvb f to \
SSl an<£ ffr-uf&cs fir f-trr our i

/%> hgcHxcr

tfic riant <*•(£• nnae pCinfm*

ncur }

rants, 6t Jr uiUi

itfC'fchgfft

Fig. 3. — Adam and Eve admiring the Plants in the Garden of
Eden. The “Vegetable Lamb” in the background.

Facsimile of the Frontispiece of Parkinson' s “ Paradisus.”

C 2

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'

£

THE FABLE AND ITS INTERPRETATION.

21

subject of discussion and research for at least a hundred
and fifty years later.

Athanasius Kircher, Professor of Mathematics at Avignon,
who wrote* in 1641, after following the error of his pre¬
decessors of quoting Scaliger as a believer in the myth,
says : —

“ Some authors have regarded it as an animal, some as a
plant ; whilst others have classed it as a true zoophyte.
In order not to multiply miracles, we assert that it is a
plant. Though its form be that of a quadruped, and the
juice beneath its woolly covering be blood which flows if
an incision be made in its flesh, these things will not move
us. It will be found to be a plant.”

This unwavering prediction has been fulfilled. But the
story had to pass through many vicissitudes of acceptance
and disbelief before this decision of Kircher was unani¬
mously admitted to be correct. It seems to have been
the fate of this curious fable, through the whole period
of its history, that no sooner has a ray of some author’s
common sense penetrated the mist of superstition by which
it was surrrounded than it has been again befogged by the
ignorant credulity of the next writer on the subject.

Jans Janszoon Strauss, a Dutchman, better known
as Jean de Struys, who travelled through many countries,
and amongst them Tartary, from 1647 to 1672, describes!
this vegetable wonder. But he was an uneducated and
credulous man, and his account of it is little more than a
repetition of the errors and fallacies of former centuries
concerning it, rendered still more incomprehensible by his

* ‘ M agues j sive de arte magnet ica opus trip art itum] p. 730.

f ‘ Voyages de Jean de Struys en Moscovie , en Tartarie , et cn Perse]
chap. xii. p. 167. Amsterdam. 1681. Also an English translation,
“done out of Dutch,” by John Morrison. London. 1684. See
Appendix E.

22

THE VEGETABLE LAMB OF TART ARY.

having confused with its “ very white down, as soft as silk,”
the Astrachan lamb-skins, which were then, and are still, a
well-known article of commerce. He says : —

“ On the west side of the Volga is a great dry and waste
heath, called the Step. On this heath is a strange kind of
fruit found, called ‘ Baiomez ’ or ‘ Barnitsch,’ from the word
‘ Boran,’ which is “ a Lamb ” in the Russian tongue, because
of its form and appearance much resembling a sheep,
having head, feet and tail. Its skin is covered with a down
very white and as soft as silk. The Tartars hold this in
great esteem, and it is sold for a high price. I have myself
paid five or six roubles for one of these skins, and doubled
my money when I sold it again. The greater number of
persons have them in their houses, where I have seen
many. That which caused me to observe it with greater
attention was that I had seen one of these fruits among the
curiosities in the house of the celebrated Mr. Swammerdam,
in Amsterdam, whose museum is full of the rarest things
in Nature from distant and foreign lands. This precious
plant was given to him by a sailor who had been formerly
a slave in China.- He found it growing in a wood, and
brought away sufficient of its skin to make an under-waist¬
coat. The description he gave of it did very much agree
with what the inhabitants of Astrachan informed me of it.
It grows upon a low stalk, about two and a half feet high,
some higher, and is supported just at the navel. The head
hangs down, as if it pastured or fed on the grass, and when
the grass decays it perishes : but this I ever looked upon
as ridiculous ; although when I suggested that the
languishing of the plant might be caused by some
temporary want of moisture, the people asseverated to me
by many oaths that they have often, out of curiosity, made
experience of that by cutting away the grass, upon which it

THE FABLE AND ITS INTERPRETATION.

instantly fades away. Certain it is that there is nothing
which is more coveted by wolves than this, and the inward
parts of it are more congeneric with the anatomy of a lamb
than mandrakes are with men. However, what I might
further say of this fruit, and what I believe of the wonder¬
ful operations of a secret sympathy in Nature, I shall rather
keep to myself than aver, or impose upon the reader with
many other things which I am sensible would appear
incredible to those who had not seen them.”

The next traveller, in order of date, who made the
Tartarian Lamb the object of his investigations was Dr.
Engelbrecht Kaempfer, who, in 1683, accompanied an
embassy to Persia, and was appointed Surgeon to the
Dutch East India Company two years later. He reported,
on his return, that he had searched “ ad risum et nauseam ”
for this “ zoophyte feeding on grass,” that there was nothing
in the country where it was believed to grow that was called
“ Borametz,” except the ordinary sheep, and that all ac¬
counts of a sheep growing upon a plant were mere fiction
and fable. “ The word ‘ Borametz,’ he says,* “ is a corruption
of the Russian * Boranetz,’ in Polish ‘ Baranak,’ the dimin¬
utive of which, ‘ Baran,’ is Sclavonic. In such a case it
signifies ‘ a sheep.’ But,” he continues, “ there is in some
of the provinces near the Caspian Sea a breed of sheep
totally different from those with which we are commonly
acquainted, and highly valued for the elegance of the skin,
which is used in various articles of clothing by the Tartars
and Persians. For the magnates and the rich who desire
a material superior to that worn by the general population,

* ‘ Amccnitatum Exoticarum ftolitico-physico-inedicarum fasciculi ,’
x., lib. 3, obs. 1. Lemgo, 1712. Kaempfer’s MSS. and collections
were acquired by Sir Hans Sloane, and were deposited in the British
Museum.

24

THE VEGETABLE LAMB OF TARTARY.

the skins of the youngest lambs are preserved, the fleeces
of these being much softer that those of the older ones,
and the younger the animal from which they are taken the
more costly are they.” He then refers to the barbarous
custom of killing the ewes before the time of natural
parturition to obtain possession of the immature fleece of
the unborn lamb, and says, correctly, that the earlier the
stage of pregnancy in which this operation is performed
the finer and softer is the fur of the foetal skin, and the
lighter and closer are the little curls for which it is chiefly
prized. The pelt, also, is so thin that it is scarcely heavier
than a membrane, and, in drying, it frequently shrinks so as
to lose all similitude to the skin of a lamb, and assumes a
form which might lead the ignorant and credulous to believe
that it was a woolly gourd. He, therefore, conjectures that
some of these dried and shrunken skins may have been
placed in museums as examples of the fleece of the “ Tarta¬
rian Lamb,” under the supposition that they were of
vegetable origin.

Kaempfer’s suggestions were ingenious, though his theory
was erroneous. But, although he rather impeded than
assisted in the correct identification of the object of dis¬
cussion, he, at least, helped to discredit the myth, which
he declared to be one of those “ received with favour by the
superstitious, and which when once they have found a writer
to describe them, however incorrectly, please the many,
obtain numerous adherents, and become respectable by age.”

An important chapter in the history of this curious
fiction was reached when, in 1698, Sir Hans Sloane laid
before the Royal Society an object which has ever since
been generally regarded as a specimen of the strange natural

* Philosophical Transactions, vol. xx. p. 861 ; and Lowthorp’s
Abridgment of the Phil. Trans, vol. ii. p. 649.

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THE FABLE AND ITS INTERPRETATION.

27

production about which so much mystery had existed,
so many outrageous stories had been told, and on which
so much learned discussion had been expended. His
description -of it is printed in the Society’s Transactions,
and is as follows : —

“The figure (fig. 4) represents what is commonly, but
falsely, in India, called ‘the Tartarian Lamb,’ sent down
from thence by Mr. Buckley.* This was more than a foot
long, as big as one’s wrist, having seven protuberances, and
towards the end some foot-stalks about three or four inches
long, exactly like the foot-stalks of ferns, both without and
within. Most part of this was covered with a down of a
dark yellowish snuff colour, some of it a quarter of an inch
long. This down is commonly used for spitting of blood,
about six grains going to a dose, and three doses pretended
to cure such a haemorrhage. In Jamaica are many scandent
and tree ferns which grow to the bigness of trees, and have
such a kind of lanugo on them, and some of the capillaries
have something like it. It seemed to be shaped by art to
imitate a lamb, the roots or climbing parts being made to
resemble the body, and the extant foot-stalks the legs.
This down is taken notice of by Dr. Merret at the latter
end of Dr. Grew’s Mus. Soc. Reg. by the name of ‘ Poco
Sempie,’ a ‘ golden moss,’ and is there said to be a cordial.
I have been assured by Mr. Brown, who has made very
good observations in the East Indies, that he has been told
by those who lived in China that this down or hair is used
by them for the stopping of blood in fresh wounds, as cob-

* This specimen evidently came from China ; for I find a record
that at the date of Sir Hans Sloane’s paper u Mr. Buckley, Chief
Surgeon at Fort St. George, in the East Indies, presented to the
Royal Society a cabinet containing Chinese surgical and other instru¬
ments and simples.”

28

THE VEGETABLE LAMB OF TARTARY.

webs are with us, and that they have it in so great esteem
that few houses are without it ; but on trials I have made
of it, though I may believe it innocent, yet I am sure it is
not infallible.”

Sir Hans Sloane had, it is true, clearly perceived the
nature of the specimen sent to the Royal Society by Mr.
Buckley, and had correctly identified it as a portion of one
of the arborescent ferns ; but on the question whether he
had discovered the right interpretation of the puzzling
enigma I shall have more to say presently. The object
figured seems to have been regarded by many of his
contemporaries as so insufficient to meet the require¬
ments of the oft-told story of the plant-animal, and so
unsatisfactory an explanation of it, that every one who
subsequently had an opportunity of visiting Tartary still
felt it to be his duty to make enquiries concerning the
famous prodigy of that country.

Accordingly, we find that John Bell, of Autermony,
availed himself of the opportunity afforded him by a
diplomatic journey to Persia,* in 171 5-1722, to endeavour,
whilst in Tartary, to obtain authentic information respecting
the “Vegetable Lamb.” He found that nothing was known
of it in the country where it was supposed to be indigenous,
and thus writes of it : —

“ Before I leave Astracan, it may be proper to rectify a
mistaken opinion which I have observed to occur in grave
German authors, who, in treating of the remarkable things
of this country relate that there grows in this desart, or
stepp adjoining to Astracan, in some plenty, a certain

* ‘Travels from St. Petersburg in Russia to various parts of Asia,
in 1716, 1719, 1722, &c., by John Bell, of Autermony. Dedicated to
the Governor, Court of Assistants, and Freemen of the Russia
Company. London. 1764.’ See Appendix F.

THE FABLE AND ITS INTERPRETATION.

29

shrub or plant called in the Russian language ‘Tartasky
Borashka/ i.e. ‘Tartarian Lamb/ with the skins of which
the caps of the Armenians, Persians, Tartars, &c., are faced.
They also write that the ‘ Tartashky Borashka ’ partakes of
animal, as well as vegetative life, and that it eats up and
devours all the grass and weeds within its reach. Though
it may be thought that an opinion so very absurd could
find no credit with people of the meanest understanding,
yet I have conversed with some who were much inclined
to believe it, so very prevalent is the prodigious and absurd
with some part of mankind. In search of this wonderful
plant I walked many a mile accompanied by Tartars who
inhabit these desarts ; but all I could find out were some
dry bushes, scattered here and there, which grow on a single
stalk with a bushy top of a brownish colour : the stalk is
about eighteen inches high, the top consisting of sharp
prickly leaves. It is true that no grass or weeds grow
within the circle of its shade — a property natural to many
other plants, here and elsewhere. After a careful enquiry
of the more sensible and experienced among the Tartars,
I found they laughed at it as a ridiculous fable.”

Bell further says : —

“ In Astracan they have large quantities of lamb-skins,
grey and black, some waved and others curled, all naturally
and very pretty, having a fine gloss, especially the waved,
which at a small distance appear like the richest watered
tabby : * they are much esteemed, and are much used for
the lining of coats and the turning up of caps, in Persia,
Russia, and other parts. The best of these are brought
from Bucharia, China, and the countries adjacent, and are
taken from the ewe’s belly after she hath been killed, or the

* A rich watered silk : from the French “ tabis ” ; Italian, “ tab i” ;
Persian, “ retabiT

30

THE VEGETABLE LAMB OF TART ARY.

lamb is killed immediately after it is lambed, for such a
skin is equal in value to the sheep. The Kalmuks and
those Tartars who inhabit the desert in the neighbourhood
of Astracan have also lamb-skins which are applied to the
same purpose, but the wool of these being rougher and
more hairy, they are inferior to those of Bucharia and
China both in gloss and beauty, and also in the dressing ;
consequently in value. I have known one single lamb-skin
from Bucharia sold for five or six shillings sterling, when
one of these would not yield two shillings.”

Bell had sufficient discrimination to see that these
Astracan lamb-skins were in no way connected with the
fable of the “ Borametz,” and thus avoided the error of
Kaempfer, who regarded them as having given rise to the
reports of the existence of that marvellous “animal-plant.”

The Abbe Chappe-d’Auteroche, during his visit to Tar¬
tary,* about half a century later than John Bell, sought for
the “ Scythian Lamb ” with equal earnestness and with
similar want of success.

Long, however, before the result of the investigations of
these two travellers had been made known, a second
manipulated fern-root, similar to that described by Sir Hans
Sloane, had been subjected to the scrutiny of another
keen and scientific observer.

In September, 1725, Dr. John Philip Breyn, of Dantzic,
addressed to the Royal Society of London an important
communication in Latin on this subject,! in which he
expressed his complete disbelief in the old story, and
described a specimen of the “ Borametz ” (as he believed it

* 1 Voyage en Siberie,’ Paris. 1768.

| ‘ Dissertiuncula de Agno Vegetabili Scythico , Borametz vulgo
dicto .’ Phil. Trans., vol. xxxiii. p. 353, 1725 ; and also in Martyn’s
Abridgment of t e Phil. Trans., vol. vi. p. 317.

Fig. 5.— Rough model of a tan-coloured dog, shaped ey the
Chinese from the rhizome of a fern, and sub¬
mitted to the Royal Society by Dr. Breyn as a

SPECIMEN OF THE “ SCYTHIAN VEGETABLE LAMB.”

From the ‘Philosophical Transactions No. 390.

dT’Ju/oa dJravJ *J\f$ Sgo

^/Lcj.nvJ JbythicuJ vcqc&il/UiN .
CBcrvmutz, dictum >

cay

•ytlujur C&rvynuirTW <

THE FABLE AND ITS INTERPRETATION.

33

to be) which had fallen into his hands, and which had led
him, independently, to the same conclusion as that
arrived at by Sir Hans Sloane, of whose observations, he
says, he was unaware when his own memoranda were
written. Commencing by quoting the maxim, “ Non ftngen-
dum sed inveniendum quid Natura faciat aut ferat ,” he
urges upon all who search for the hidden treasures of
Nature, or who desire to discover her secrets, to bear in
mind that golden axiom that “ the works and productions
of Nature should be discovered, not invented,” and
remarks that, if the older writers had adhered to this,
Natural History, great and honourable in itself, would not
have been tarnished by so many silly fables like that of the
“ Scythian Lamb.” He directs attention to the fact that
none of those who have described this plant-animal are
able to say that they ever saw it growing ; quotes Kaemp-
fer’s interpretation of the origin of the report, namely the
Astrachan lamb-skins of commerce, and hesitates to regard
the object in his possession as the key of the problem.
That he had grave and sufficient reasons for his doubts
upon this point will be seen from his interesting description
of the curiosity referred to. He says : —

“ A certain learned and observant man, passing through
our city on his return from a journey through Muscovy,
enriched my museum with, amongst other natural curiosities,
one of these ‘ Scythian Lambs,’ which he declared to be the
genuine Borametz. It was about six inches in length, and
had a head, ears, and four legs. Its colour was that of iron-
rust, and it was covered all over with a kind of down, like the
fibres of silk-plush, except upon the ears and legs, which
were bare, and were of a somewhat darker tawny hue. On
careful examination of it, I discovered that it was not an
animal production, nor yet a fruit, but either the thick

D

34

THE VEGETABLE LAMB OF TARTARV.

creeping root, or the climbing stem, of some plant, which by
obstetric art had acquired the form of a quadruped animal.
For the four legs, which looked as if the feet had been cut
off from them, were so many stalks which had supported
leaves, as were also those which formed the ears, and
which more nearly resembled horns. The fibres emerging
from these, by which, like other plants, this root or stalk
had conveyed nutriment, left no doubt upon this point.
Close inspection also showed that one of the front legs had
been artificially inserted, and that the head and neck were
not of one continuous substance with the body, but had
been very cleverly and neatly joined on to it. In fact, this
root, or stem, had been skilfully manipulated into the form
of a lamb in the same artful manner as the little figures of
men, which, it was said, shrieked and dropped human blood
when drawn from the ground, were formed from the roots
of the mandragore and bryony.”

Dr. Breyn added that there remained in his mind some
doubt as to the plant from which this burlesque of nature
and art was fabricated, until the similarity of its ferruginous
silky fibres to those of some of the capillaries suggested the
thought that it must be a portion of some exotic fern. As
to the particular species to which it belonged he was unable
to pronounce an authoritative opinion, but, hoping in the
course of time to receive more certain information concern¬
ing it, he would merely say that he believed it was of a
peculiar species found in Tartary, and up to that date
undescribed.

Dr. Breyn’s confirmation of Sir Hans Sloane’s identifi¬
cation of the “ Scythian Lamb ” as the stem or rootlet of a
fern artificially and cleverly manipulated was a crushing
blow to the already weakened fable. Unfortunately, how¬
ever, the conclusion thus arrived at was utterly misleading,

THE FABLE AND ITS INTERPRETATION.

35

though it not only satisfied his contemporaries, but has
ever since — even to the present day — been universally
accepted as the correct interpretation of the problem. The
injurious result was, that, as the question appeared to have
been set at rest, enquiry ceased, and for nearly sixty vears
afterwards no more was heard of the “Vegetable Lamb.”

Towards the close of the century two eminent botanists,
who were, of course, well acquainted with the specimens
that had been described by Sir Hans Sloane and Dr.
Breyn, were constrained in writing of the poetry of their
science to make the legendary “ Borametz ” their theme.

Dr. Erasmus Darwin, in 1781, contributed to the
literature of the subject the following lines* : —

“ E’en round the Pole the flames of love aspire,

And icy bosoms feel the secret fire,

Cradled in snow, and fanned by Arctic air,

Shines, gentle Borametz, thy golden hair ;

Rooted in earth, each cloven foot descends,

And round and round her flexile neck she bends,

Crops the grey coral moss, and hoary thyme,

Or laps with rosy tongue the melting rime ;

Eyes with mute tenderness her distant dam,

And seems to bleat — a ‘ vegetable lamb.’ ”

Dr. Erasmus Darwin appears to have bestowed “ golden
hair ” upon his Borametz, to assimilate it to the fern-root
toys that were regarded as its prototypes ; but as the fern
of which they were made is a native of Southern China,
and as no author has described the lamb-plant as being
found in a cold climate, his authority and his motive
for locating it in an arctic region are alike inexplicable.

Dr. De la Croix, the other botanical author above
referred to, extolled, in 1791, the fabulous animal-plant

* ‘ The Botanic Garden.’ A poem in two parts ; with philoso¬
phical notes. London. 1781.

36

THE VEGETABLE LAMB OF TART ARY.

in a Latin poem * which Bishop Atterbury characterized
as “ excellent, and approaching very near to the versification
of Virgil’s ‘ Georgies.’ ’'

“ Oui Caspia sulcant

Alquora, sive legant spumosa Boristhenis ora
Sive petant Asiam velis, et Colchica regna,

Hinc atque inde stupent visu mirabile monstrum :

Surgit humo Borames. Prsecelso in stipite fructus
Stat quadrupes. Olli vellus. Duo cornua fronte
Lanea, nec desunt oculi ; rudis accola credit
Esse animal, dormire die, vigilare per umbram,

Et circum exesis pasci radicitus herbis :

Carnibus Ambrosias sapor est, succique rubentes
Posthabeat quibusalma suum Burgundia Nectar ;

Atque loco si ferre pedem Natura dedisset,

Balatu si posset opem implorare voracis

Ora lupi contra, credas in stirpe sedere

Agnum equitem, gregibusque agnorum albescere colles.”

As this has not been “ done into English ” (to use an old
phrase), I venture to offer the following translation of it : —

“ The traveller who ploughs the Caspian wave
For Asia bound, where foaming breakers lave
Borysthenes’ wild shores, no sooner lands
Than gazing in astonishment he stands ;

For in his path he sees a monstrous birth,

The Borametz arises from the earth :

Upon a stalk is fixed a living brute,

A rooted plant bears quadruped for fruit,

It has a fleece, nor does it want for eyes,

And from its brows two woolly horns arise.

The rude and simple country people say

It is an animal that sleeps by day

And wakes at night, though rooted to the ground,

To feed on grass within its reach around.

The flavour of Ambrosia its flesh

Pervades ; and the red nectar, rich and fresh,

Which vineyards of fair Burgundy produce
Is less delicious than its ruddy juice.

* ‘ Connubia Florum, Latino Carmine Demonstrata.’ Bath. 1791.

supposed to be “ Vegetable Lambs.

THE FABLE AND ITS INTERPRETATION.

39

If Nature had but on it feet bestowed,

Or with a voice to bleat the lamb endowed,

To cry for help against the threat’ning fangs
Of hungry wolves ; as on its stalk it hangs,

Seated on horseback it might seem to ride,

Whit’ning with thousands more the mountain side.”

We must now leave the poetical view of the subject, and
come to facts.

The substance of which the artificial animals exhibited
by Sir Hans Sloane and Dr. Breyn were constructed is the
long root-stock of a fern of the genus Dicksonia , of which
there are from thirty to thirty-five species, varying greatly
in size, in their mode of growth, and in the cutting of their
fronds. Some of them, such as D. antarctica , a native of
Australia and New Zealand, often seen in our greenhouses,
are tree-like in habit, having stems from ten to forty
feet in height, and fronds two or three yards in length, and
two feet or more across ; whilst others have root-stocks
creeping along the surface of the ground. The genus is
most fully represented in tropical America and Polynesia :
one species extends as far north as the United States and
Canada, and another was introduced into this country from
St. Helena. In some species, such as D. Molluccensis , from
Java, the stems are furnished with strong hooked prickles ;
in others they are densely clad at the base with a thick
coat of yellow-brown hairs, which shine almost like
burnished gold. The stems of D. Sel/owiana, from tropical
America, are so thickly clad with long fibrous hairs, chang¬
ing to brown or nearly black, that it has been said they
precisely resemble the thighs of the howling monkeys.*

* See ‘ European Ferns,’ By James Britten, F.L.S. ; with coloured
illustrations from Nature, by Dr. Blair, F.L.S. Cassell. London.— A
work full of information on the culture, classification, and history of
ferns. I am indebted to it for many of the details here given of the
economic value of ferns.

40

THE VEGETABLE LAMB OF TART ARY.

The species of Dicksonia which has been supposed to
have given origin to the fable of the “ Scythian Lamb ” has,
from that circumstance, received the name of Barometz . It
was formerly known as Cibotium glaucescens. It was intro¬
duced into cultivation in conservatories in this country
about the year 1830, and was shortly afterwards described
as Cibotium barometz , but the genus Cibotium is now
generally united with Dicksonia. Its long caudex, or root-
stock, creeps over the surface of the ground in the same
manner as that of the better known “Hare’s-foot” fern,
Davallia Canariensis, and this is covered with long silky
hairs, or scales, which look something like wool when old
and dry. These hairs or scales have been sometimes used
as a styptic in Germany, and also, very commonly, in China,
as related to Sir Hans Sloane by Dr. Brown. The similar
hairs of other species of Dicksonia, natives of the Sandwich
Islands, are exported to the extent of many thousands of
pounds weight annually under the name of “ Pulu,” and are
used in the stuffing of mattrasses, cushions, &c. The hairs
of D. culcita are similarly utilised in Madeira. No more
than two or three ounces of hair are yielded by each plant,
and it is reckoned that about four years must elapse before
another gathering can be obtained.

The rhizomes and stems of many ferns abound in starch,
and have a commercial value, either as medicine or food.
The soft mucilaginous pith of Cyathea medullar is , one of
the large tree-ferns of New Zealand, was formerly eaten by
the natives. It is of a reddish colour, and, when baked,
acquires a somewhat pungent flavour. In New Zealand
ferns seem to be in some repute for their edible properties,
for the large scaly rhizomes of Marattia fraxinea , and
those of another fern, Pteris esculenta , nearly allied to our
common bracken, P. aquilina, are also eaten by the Maoris.

THE FABLE AND ITS INTERPRETATION.

4i

The natives bake them in ashes, peel them with their teeth,
and eat them with meat, as we do bread ; and sometimes
pound them between stones, in order to extract the
nutritious matter, the woody part being rejected as useless.
In Nepaul, the rhizomes of Nephrolepis tuberosa are similarly
prepared for food ; and in New Caledonia the mucilaginous
matter of Cyathea vieillardii is obtained from incisions
made in the stem, or at the base of the fronds. The
succulent fronds of the little water-fern, Ceratopteris thalic-
troides , are boiled and eaten as a vegetable by the poorer
classes in the Indian Archipelago. The young shoots of
the handsome tree-fern, A ngiopteris evecta, are eaten in the
Society Islands, and its large rhizome, which is in great
part composed of mucilage, yields, when dried, a kind of
flour. In the same islands the young fronds of Helmin-
thostachys limulata , the “ Balabala ” of the Fiji Islands, are
eaten in times of scarcity ; and the soft scales covering the
stipes of the fronds are used by the white settlers for stuffing
pillows and cushions in preference to feathers, because
they do not become heated, and are thus more comfort¬
able in a sultry climate. In New South Wales, the thick
rhizome of Blechnum cartilagineum is much eaten by the
natives. It is first roasted and then beaten, so as to
break away the woody fibre : it is said to taste like a waxy
potato.

By skilful treatment the inhabitants of Southern China
occasionally converted the thick root-stock of one of
these tree-ferns, “ Dicksonia barometz? into a rough sem¬
blance of a quadruped, which quadruped, by a foregone
conclusion, was supposed to be a lamb. They removed
entirely the fronds that grew upward from the rhizome,
excepting four, and these four they trimmed down until
only about four inches of each stalk was left. The object

42

THE VEGETABLE LAMB OF TARTARY.

thus shaped being turned upside down, the root-stock
represented the body of the animal, and was supported by
the four inverted stalks of the fronds, as upon four legs.
If the specimen had an insufficient number of stalks grow¬
ing from it to make the four legs, others were artificially
and neatly affixed to it ; ears were similarly provided, and,
if necessary, the trunk was fitted with a head and neck
made from another root-stock.

So far, well ! The identification of the material of which
these imitations of four-legged animals were fashioned as
the rhizome and frond-stalks of a tree-fern is complete, and
perfectly satisfactory. But, having given to these root-stocks
of tree-ferns the full benefit of an acknowledgment of the
economic uses that have been made of them in various ways
and in different localities, and having frankly stated the still
accepted theory of their connection with the myth of the
“Vegetable Lamb of Scythia,” I have to express my very
decided opinion that they and the “ lambs ” (?) made from
them had no more to do with the origin of the fable of the
“ Barometz ” than the artificial mermaids so cleverly made
by the Japanese have had to do with the origin of the belief
in fish-tailed human beings and divinities. In the first place,
as we shall presently see, these manipulated ferns were not
intended by those who fashioned them to resemble lambs
at all. Secondly, if they had been intended to represent
the lamb of the fable, they could have been, like the
Japanese mermaids, only the outcome and illustration of the
legend — not the objects which first gave rise to it. Neither
the one nor the other of these counterfeit fabrications appears
to have been ever common ; and neither was certainly manu¬
factured in sufficient numbers, nor distributed so abundantly
and completely over the habitable globe, as to have laid the
foundation of a myth which in the one case was universally

THE FABLE AND ITS INTERPRETATION.

43

believed,* and in the other attracted attention all over
Europe and Western Asia, and also in Egypt. Very few
of the Japanese artificial mermaids have been seen in this
country, though they have been eagerly sought for, and the
fern-“ lambs ” that have been brought to England may be
counted on one’s fingers.!

* See the Chapter on “ Mermaids ” by the Author in ‘Sea Fables
Explained,’ one of the Handbooks issued by the Authorities of the
Great International Fisheries Exhibition of 1883. London. Clowes
and Sons, Limited.

f I know of only four — (though, of course, there may be others, of
which I shall be glad to receive information) — namely, one in the
Botanical department of the British Museum ; another in the
Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons ; the specimen sent from
India by Mr. Buckley to the Royal Society in 1698 ; and that
described by Dr. Breyn in 1725. Of the origin of the first-mentioned
nothing is known, though it is apparently the one figured by John and
Andrew Rymsdyk, in their ‘ Museum Britannicum ’ (1778, plate xv.),
as one of the curious objects in the British Museum. Of the second
we only know that it was presented to the College of Surgeons by
Mr. Ouekett — the habitat of the fern of which it is composed being
erroneously given in the Catalogue (No. 177 of “ Plants and Inverte¬
brates ”) as “ Plains of Tartary,” the supposed home of the mythical
lamb, but where the fern in question never grew. That sent to
England by Mr. Buckley, and which was the subject of Sir Hans
Sloane’s paper in 1698, seems to have been lost or mislaid. Whether
it remained in the possession of the Royal Society, or was placed
by Sir Hans Sloane in his own collection, it ought to be in the
British Museum. But nothing is known of it there, nor of the cabinet
of surgical instruments and appliances in which it arrived. I have
endeavoured to trace it ; but although, as usual, I have met with every
kind assistance and courtesy from the heads of departments, I have
been unsuccessful.

Sir Hans Sloane, who died in 1753, bequeathed his valuable col¬
lection and library to the nation on the condition that £ 20,000 should
be paid to his executors for the benefit of his daughters. The Govern¬
ment raised the necessary funds by a guinea lottery, and sufficient
money was thus obtained to purchase also (for ,£10,500) Montague
House, in Bloomsbury, which then became the British Museum.

44

THE VEGETABLE LAMB OF TART ARY.

Further, it is a fact which seems to have been strangely
overlooked, that these tree-ferns, with the creeping root¬
stocks, do not grow in Tartary. The particular species of
Dicksonia from which the doll-“ lambs ” were made is a
native of Southern China, Assam, and the Malayan penin¬
sula and islands.* And we have conclusive evidence, in
addition to the report made by Mr. Buckley to the Royal
Society (p. 27), that these playthings themselves were of
Chinese workmanship.

Juan de Loureiro, an accomplished Portuguese botanist
and Fellow of the Royal Society of Lisbon, who lived and
laboured as a Catholic missionary for more than thirty
years in Cochin China, and, afterwards, for three years in
China, thus writes f : —

“ The P olypodium borametz grows in hilly woods in
China and Cochin China. Many authors have written of
the Scythian Lamb, or Borametz — most of them fabulously.
Ours is not a fruit, but a root, which is easily shaped by
the help of a little art into the form of a small rufous dog ,
by which name , and not by that of a * 1 Iambi it is called by the
Chinese .”

When the Royal Society removed from their old premises, in Crane
Court, to Somerset House in 1780 they also gave the contents of their
cabinets to the National Collection, but many of these, and amongst
them this fern-root animal, cannot be found.

Dr. Breyn, of Dantzic, no doubt retained the specimen which he
described, and it is probably in some continental collection.

I know, therefore, of only two of these so-called “ lambs ” extant in
this country — one in the Natural History Museum, South Kensington,
and the other in the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons. No
history of either of these has been preserved.

* ‘ Synopsis Filicuml by Sir W. J. Hooker and J. G. Baker,
F.L.S. 1863. Art. Dicksonia barometz.”

f Flora Cochinchinensis , tom. i. p. 675. Lisbon. 1790.

THE FABLE AND ITS INTERPRETATION.

45

Loureiro describes the cutting off the stalks to form the
legs, the fixing on of smaller ones as ears, and other
particulars of the rude manufacture of these fern-root dogs,
as witnessed by himself. The common name of these toys
in China — “ Cau-tich,” and in Cochin China, “ Kew-tsie,”
both represent a “ tan-coloured dog.”

It must also be borne in mind that the lamb-plant was
represented as springing from a seed like that of a melon, but
rounder, and that the natives of the country where it grew
planted these seeds. It was therefore a cultivated plant.
The lamb, it was also stated, was contained within the fruit
or seed-capsule of the plant ; and when this fruit, or seed-
pod, was ripe it burst open, and the little lamb within it
was disclosed. The wool of this lamb was described by
various writers as being “ very white,” “ as white as snow,”
whereas these root-stocks of ferns bear no resemblance to
a lamb in their natural condition ; and when they have
been deftly trimmed into shape the hairs or scales upon
them are tawny orange, matching better with the “ tan ”
markings of a dog, which they were intended to represent,
than with the soft, white fleece of a young lamb.

Therefore, even if I had no better explanation to offer,
I should be led to the conclusion that the identification of
these tawny to y-dogs, made in China from the root of a
wild fern, the spores of which are as small as dust, with
the “ Vegetable Lambs ” of Scythia , whose white fleeces
were found within the ripe and opening fruit of a cultivated
plant, raised from a large seed, was obviously erroneous,
and that the origin of the rumour must be sought for else-
were.

The plant that set all Europe talking of the lambs that
grew in fruits and on stalks of plants somewhere in Scythia
was one of far higher importance and value to mankind

46

THE VEGETABLE LAMB OF TART ARY.

than the childish knick-knacks made for amusement out
of the creeping root-stocks of ferns. These and the curly-
fleeced progeny of the poor ewes of Astrachan were lambs
that crossed the track of the first, lost lamb, and led those
searching for it into the mistake of following their respec¬
tive trails, whilst the original “ Scythian Lamb ” escaped
from sight

Tracing the growth and transition of this story of the
lamb-plant from a truthful rumour of a curious fact into a
detailed history of an absurd fiction, I have no doubt what¬
ever that it originated in early descriptions of the cotton
plant, and the introduction of cotton from India into
Western Asia and the adjoining parts of Eastern Europe.

Herodotus, writing (b.C. 445) of the usages of the people
of India, says (lib. iii. cap. 106) of this cotton : — “ Certain
trees bear for their fruit fleeces surpassing those of sheep
in beauty and excellence, and the natives clothe themselves
in cloths made therefrom.”

In the 47th chapter of the same book, Herodotus de¬
scribes 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

THE FABLE AND ITS INTERPRETATION.

47

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.”*

Theophrastus, the disciple of Aristotle, writing about
B.C. 306, says f : —

“ 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,J

* 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 ErythrcEi] which contain valuable particulars of
Alexander’s expedition, about A.D. 1 31-135.

f ‘ De Historia Plantarum] lib. iv. cap. 4.

X Theophrastus is in error in placing Tylos in the Arabian Gulf
(which we now call the Red Sea) ; it was in the Persian Gulf, and is
now known as Bahrsin. The ancients, however, gave to the whole of

48

THE VEGETABLE LAMB OF TARTARY.

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 (“ fjLrjXov ”), 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* * 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

the sea between the east coast of Africa, north of Mogador, and the
west shores of India the name of the “ Erythraean Sea,” from King
Erythros, of whom nothing more is known than the name, which, in
Greek, signifies “red.” From this casual meaning of the word it
came to be believed that the water of this sea differed in colour from
that of others, and that it was consequently more difficult to navigate.

* De Situ Orbis , lib. iii. cap. 7.

t ‘ Naturalis Historia a.d. 77.

THE FABLE AND ITS INTERPRETATION.

49

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 Theo¬
phrastus 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 after¬
wards 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

E

5o

THE VEGETABLE LAMB OF TARTARY.

myths of the Middle Ages, attributable to two principal
causes : —

i. 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 “ /jltjXov ” (melon), very fitly used by Theophrastus in
the passage quoted (p. 48) to describe the form and ap¬
pearance of the unripe cotton-pod, may be equally correctly
translated “ a fruit,” “ an apple,” or “ a sheep ” : the adjective
“ iapivov ,” 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

THE FABLE AND ITS INTERPRETATION.

5i

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 realisti¬
cally describe snow as feathers would probably describe

E 2

52

THE VEGETABLE LAMB OF TART ARY.

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 com¬
paring 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 ac¬
quaintances, 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.* 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 ;

* See Appendix G.

THE FABLE AND ITS INTERPRETATION.

53

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.*

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 sur¬
rounding 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

* ‘ See 1 Sea Fables Explained,’ by the Author, 2nd edition, p. 114.
Clowes and Sons, Limited.

5

THE VEGETABLE LAMB OF TARTARY.

Robert Moray in enumerating the “ parts and features ”
of the “ little tree-bird.”* 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 con¬
cerning 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 re¬
presentatives of science, down to the present day, of three
or four trumpery toys artificially and roughly fashioned by

* The figures of the ancient partly human, partly piscine deities,
from which originated the belief in mermaids, similarly passed through
various mutations. The first idea was that of a man coming out of the
mouth of a fish. Subsequently, the form was that of a man clad in the
skin of a fish— wearing it as a mantle — the head of the fish covering
that of the man, like a cap or helmet. And so on, till a being was
developed the upper half of whose body was human, and the lower
half, from the waist downwards, that of a fish.

THE FABLE AND ITS INTERPRETATION .

55

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,* “ 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 exhala¬
tion. 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
* 1 The Cotton Manufacture of Great Britain,’ p. 71.

56

THE VEGETABLE LAMB OF TART ARY.

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 in¬
tending 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

THE FABLE AND ITS INTERPRETATION.

57

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 in¬
habiting 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 synony¬
mous, 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, Mon¬
golia, 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

58

THE VEGETABLE LAMB OF TARTARY.

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 domin¬
ion 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 depot to which
they were generally forwarded was Samarcand, as was

THE FABLE AND ITS INTERPRETATION.

59

correctly related to Guillaume Postel by Michel, the Arabic
interpreter (p. 1 3). There they met the great caravan travel¬
ling 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 .Eneas 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 pains¬
taking 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 ”

6o

THE VEGETABLE LAMB OF TART ARY.

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.”

Fig. 7. — The Real “Vegetable Lamb” — A Cotton Pod.

( Gossypium herbaceitm.)

( 63 )

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 Malvaceae —
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

64

THE VEGETABLE LAMB OF TART ARY.

increases to the size of a large cob-nut or small medlar,
and becomes brown as the woolly fruit ripens. The ex¬
pansion 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 arbor eum, 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

COTTON AND THE COTTON TRADE.

65

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 opera¬
tions 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,* in the first
book of the Rig Veda, Hymn 105, verse 8, which is sup¬
posed 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 “ KarpasumP 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 “ carbasusP

It is evident that the manufacture of cotton in India

* ‘ On the Culture and Commerce of Cotton in India and else¬
where,’ by J. Forbes Royle, M.D., F.R.S. London. 1851.

F

66

THE VEGETABLE LAMB OF TART ARY.

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

COTTON AND THE COTTON TRADE.

67

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

F 2

68

THE VEGETABLE LAMB OF TARTARV.

knowledge, is a wonderful monument of scientific observa¬
tion.

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 accom¬
panied 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

COTTON AND THE COTTON TEA BE.

69

the commencement of his journey. Having safely accom¬
plished 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 under¬
stood 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 accom¬
plished, 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

70

THE VEGETABLE LAMB OF TARTARV.

them to guard with the utmost care against the defile¬
ment 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.”*

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
1 Robertson's 1 Historical Disquisition Concerning India.’

COTTON AND THE COTTON TRADE.

7i

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 gene¬
rals, 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.*

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

* See Appendix H.

72

THE VEGETABLE LAMB OF TART ARY.

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 com¬
munication 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 Alex¬
ander 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 Alex¬
ander 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 astro-

COTTON AND THE COTTON TRADE.

73

nomy 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 Caesar,
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 Bary-
gaza was the port from which they were chiefly shipped.

74

THE VEGETABLE LAMB OF TART ARY.

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 Alex¬
ander, and encouraged by Ptolemy Lagus and his son, pros¬
pered for nearly a thousand years. It survived the downfall
of the Roman Empire, A.D. 476, and lasted until the con¬
quest of Egypt by the Mahometans under Amru Benalas,
the general of Caliph Omar, A.D. 634.

As no communication was carried on between Mahome¬
tans 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 commence¬
ment 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 unac-

COTTON AND THE COTTON TRADE.

75

quainted with cotton. At one time there was considerable
discussion concerning the substance from which the swath¬
ing 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 dis¬
tinguish 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 represen¬
tations of flax occur, in its different stages of growth,
harvest, and manufacture.*

The circumstance mentioned by Herodotus, that King
Amasis of Egypt, in sending as a gift to Sparta a corselet
padded with cotton and ornamented with gold thread,
thought it a fit present from a King, and in dedicating a
similar one to Minerva in her temple at Lindus considered
it an offering worthy of the goddess, shows that it was at
that period a novelty and a rarity. The first knowledge
of cotton in Egypt may, I think, be correctly assigned to
that date — about B.C. 550. Linen was the principal cloth¬
ing material of the Egyptians, and the manufacture of it
from flax by them is probably of as great antiquity as the
growth and wearing of cotton in India. The embalmed
bodies of their dead were wrapped in it during successive

* In the Grotto of El Kab are paintings representing, amongst
other scenes, a field of corn and a crop of flax. Four persons are
employed in pulling up the flax by the roots ; another binds it into
sheaves ; a sixth carries it to a distance ; and a seventh separates the
linseed from the stem by means of a four-toothed “ ripple,” which he
uses just in the same way as it is now used in Europe. See Hamilton’s
‘ AEgyptiaca ,’ Plate xxiii., and Yates’s ‘ Textrinum Antiquorum ,’ p. 255,

7 6

THE VEGETABLE LAMB OF TART ARY.

ages through a period of more than two thousand years,
and their priests wore it during the same period, its clean
white texture being accepted as a semblance of purity,
whereas wool, taken from a sheep, was deemed a profane
attire.

Flax and linen are frequently referred to in the Bible.
The earliest mention of the former is in Exodus ix. 3 1, in the
account of the plague of hail that devastated Lower Egypt
B.C. 1491, and destroyed, when they were nearly ripe for
harvest, the two most important crops of the Egyptians —
that of the barley on which they relied for food for them¬
selves and for export to other nations, and the flax on which
they depended for their clothing and manufacturing employ¬
ment. For flax was not only used for wearing apparel,
but the coarser kinds were employed for making sail-cloths,
ropes, nets, and for other purposes for which hemp is
generally used.

It is surprising that notwithstanding the comparative
proximity of Egypt to India, cotton, which had been for
ages so extensively manufactured in the latter country,
should have remained so long unknown or unappreciated
by a people to whom it would have furnished a cheaper
and more comfortable article of dress than the flax-plant.
But it is certain that linen was held in favour and the use of
it prevailed in Egypt till the Christian era, although the
cotton fabrics imported into Berenice were gradually coming
into more general wear. Pacatus mentions that Mark
Antony’s soldiers wore cotton in Egypt, and says that
they felt so much discomfort from the heat that they
could hardly tolerate light cotton clothing, even in the
shade.

From a passage in Pliny’s Natural History (lib. xix.
cap. 1) it would appear that the cotton plant was cultivated

COTTON AND THE COTTON TRADE.

77

in Upper Egypt in his day (A.D. 77), and this has been
accepted as genuine and quoted by Dr. Ure* and others.
But Mr. Yates, in his ‘ Textrinum A nti quorum ’ (p. 459),
shows good reason for believing that the paragraph was
interpolated in the text of one of the MSS. of Pliny’s
work, after having been originally an annotation in the
margin of an earlier copy. This explanation clears up an
otherwise involved and disconnected passage, and there are
other reasons besides those given by Mr. Yates for believing
that his surmise is correct.

Abdollatiph, an Arabian physician who visited Egypt at
the end of the twelfth century, does not mention cotton in
the account which he wrote (A.D. 1203), of the plants of that
country ; and Prospero Alpini, the Paduan physician and
botanist, who some four centuries later directed his atten¬
tion to the natural history of Egypt, says f that the
Egyptians then imported cotton for their use, that the
herbaceous kind ( Gossypium herbaceuvi), from which cotton
was obtained in Syria and Cyprus, did not grow in Egypt,
but that the tree kind ( G . arboreum ) was cultivated as an
ornamental plant in private gardens, and in very small
quantities, its down not being used for spinning.

Belon, who was in Egypt about thirty years before
Alpini, makes no mention of cotton growing there ; but
says that he found it in Arabia, at the north of the Arabian
Gulf, near Mount Sinai.

It would appear, therefore, that up to the beginning of the
seventeenth century the Egyptians were importers, not
cultivators, of cotton.

From a passage in the comedy ‘ Pausimachus ’ of Cecilius
Statius (who died B.C. 169), quoted by Mr. Yates in the

* ‘ The Cotton Manufacture of Great Britain.’
f ‘ De Plantis /Egypt i] cap. 18.

78

THE VEGETABLE LAMB OF TART ARY.

work already referred to, the Greeks seem to have been
acquainted with muslins and calicoes brought from India 200
years before Christ ; and about a century later the Romans
adopted the Oriental custom of using cotton-cloth as a
protection from the sun’s rays. Ornamental coverings for
tents were made from it, and awnings of striped and coloured
calico were spread over the theatres, and gave welcome shade
to the spectators. It was also used for sail-cloth. Cotton
fabrics are frequently mentioned by the poets of the
Augustan age, and by writers of a later date ; but the finer
qualities are almost always referred to in a manner which
indicates that by the Greeks and Romans they were
regarded rather as an expensive and curious production
than as an article of common use. Their dress was almost
entirely woollen, which, as they frequently used the bath,
was always comfortable ; and, for cooler wear, as Mr. Yates
truly observes, “ there appears no reason why cotton fabrics
should have been used in preference to linen. The latter
is more cleanly, more durable, and much less liable to take
fire ; and amongst the ancients it must have been much the
cheaper of the two.” In Rome and Athens the finest
woven goods were extravagantly dear, for the body of the
people were practically excluded from manufacturing work.
This was principally carried on by slaves for the benefit of
their masters, for all the great men had large establishments
of slaves who understood the art of manufacturing most of
the articles necessary for ordinary use. The importation
of cotton and piece-goods into ancient Greece and Rome
was therefore comparatively inconsiderable.

With the fall of the Roman Empire, into which Greece
had previously been absorbed, art and science in Europe
sank into a death-like trance which lasted for many cen¬
turies. We will therefore trace the progress of the Indian

COTTON AND THE COTTON TRADE.

79

cotton trade in other directions during the long period that
elapsed before science and art revived.

As India carried on a very important manufacture of
cotton for home consumption, as well as for her large
exports, it might be supposed that China would have been
led to participate in the advantages offered by it. But,
as in Egypt flax had been for many ages the raw
material principally used for the clothing of the population,
so in China fabrics woven from the web of the silkworm
were, from the earliest times, used for the dress of all classes
of the people. By authorities of high repute in China we
are informed that Si-Hing, wife of the Emperor Hoang-Ti,
began to breed silkworms about 2,600 years before Christ,
and that the mulberry tree was cultivated to supply them
with food four hundred years afterwards.

India was the country of cotton ; Egypt, of flax ; China,
of silk ; and in the two latter countries (especially in the case
of the exclusive Chinese) vested interests for a long time
barred the way against the adoption of the new foreign
material. Cotton vestments and robes of honour were
occasionally presented to the Chinese emperors by foreign
ambassadors, and were highly appreciated and admired.
The Emperor Ou-Ti, whose reign commenced B.c. 502, had
one of these robes ; but it was not till fifteen hundred years
later that cotton began to be cultivated in China for manu¬
facturing purposes. Towards the end of the seventh
century the herbaceous species was grown in the gardens of
Pekin, but only for the sake of its flowers. When the
country was conquered by the Mongolian Tartars, A.D. 1280,
the emperors of that dynasty took all possible pains to
extend the culture of cotton, and imposed an annual tribute
of it on several provinces. The cultivators, merchants,
weavers, and wearers of silk (which included the whole

8o

THE VEGETABLE LAMB OF TART ARY.

nation) regarded this as a dangerous innovation seriously
affecting their rights and habits, and zealously tried to
maintain the established usages of the people. Eventually,
however, their prejudices were overcome, and at present
nine persons out of ten in China are clad in cotton raiment.

Returning to the dark ages of Europe, and the rise of
the Mahometan power there, we find that by the end of the
seventh century the cultivation and manufacture of cotton
in Arabia and Syria had become an important industry,
and had also crept along the northern coast of Africa.
When, therefore, the Saracens and Moors invaded Spain
and wrested it from the Goths (a.D. 712) they brought with
them a knowledge of the plant and its uses. Being well
skilled in agriculture, they immediately introduced in the
conquered territory the cultivation of cotton, sugar, rice,
and the mulberry — the latter being in favour for the use of
its leaves as food for the silkworm. Looms were put to
work in almost every town, and the growth and weaving of
cotton were carried on with great and increasing success
until the fifteenth century. Barcelona was celebrated for
its cotton sail-cloth, of which it supplied a great quantity
to ship-owners, and stout cotton stuffs like fustian were also
qualities for which the Spanish looms were famous. Cotton
paper, too, seems to have been first made by the Spanish
Arabs, although about the same time it was substituted for
papyrus in Egypt. A paper was likewise manufactured in
Spain from linen rags which was much admired by the
literary men of the time. But the religious antipathy
which existed between the Moors and Christians prevented
the spread of these and other Oriental arts ; so that when
the Moorish domination in Spain was crushed by the con¬
quest of Grenada, in 1492, the manufactures which the
Moors had introduced and fostered relapsed into barbarous

COTTON AND THE COTTON TRADE \

Si

neglect. The cotton plant is still found growing wild in some
parts of the Peninsula. Under the influence of the Moors
cotton was cultivated in Greece, Italy, Sicily and Malta, but
upon their expulsion from Europe its growth was transferred
to the African shores of the Mediterranean.

During the sway of the Mahometans the passage of
Indian commodities to North-Western and Central Europe
was so effectually barred by them that the trade dwindled,
and the demand for the products of the East almost ceased.
When the route through Egypt was closed, the Persians,
who by that time had learned the advantages of commer¬
cial intercourse with other nations, seized the opportunity
of diverting the traffic of the Persian Gulf by the Euphrates
and Tigris to Bagdad, and thence across the Desert of
Palmyra to the Mediterranean ports. But as Constantinople
was also in the hands of the Caliphs, the roads to Europe
were long and difficult. The greater part of the goods
from India had, as I have mentioned (p. 58), to be carried
by land on the backs of camels with the great caravans
which, from time immemorial, have been the chief means of
commercial intercourse between the nations of Eastern,
Central, and Northern Asia, and the countries to the south
and west of them.

Besides the two great caravans of pilgrims and merchants
which, annually starting from Cairo and Damascus, met at
Mecca, exchanged their merchandize there, and dis¬
seminated it on their return in every country they passed
through, there were others consisting entirely of merchants
whose sole object was commerce. These at stated seasons
set out from different parts of Persia by ancient routes, on
journeys of enormous length — those for the East visited
India, and even the furthest extremities of China. Their
average rate of travel was eighteen miles per day ; and as

G

82

THE VEGETABLE LAMB OF TARTARV.

the time of their departure and their route were both
known, they were met by the people of all the countries
through which they passed, for the purpose of sale, pur¬
chase, or barter. Hence the establishment, as commercial
gathering-places, of the great fairs, of which that still held
annually at Nijni Novgorod is a well-known example.
The value of the trade thus carried on was far beyond the
conception of any one who has not given especial attention
to the subject. That between Russia and China, which
has only been discontinued within the last few years, has
been very important. In the time of Peter the Great,
though the capitals of the two empires were six thousand
three hundred and seventy-eight miles apart, and the route
lay for more than four hundred miles through an unin¬
habited desert, caravans travelled regularly from one to
the other. Tedious as this mode of conveyance appears, it
sufficed for the traffic in Eastern produce at a period when
the whole of Europe had but little time or taste for the
refinements of life, and but little means of purchasing them.
Nations were at that time frequently at war, the feudal
barons kept their vassals under arms, a soldier’s career was
the only means of acquiring distinction, and luxuries ob¬
tained by commerce were looked upon as effeminate and
degrading.

The arts and sciences first revived in Italy. The republics
of Venice and Genoa turned their attention to commerce,
and, in the year 1204, the Venetians, under Dandolo, and
assisted by the soldiers of the fourth crusade, took the city
of Constantinople from the Greeks, and, for a time, had the
advantage of carrying on the Indian trade. They only
held it, however, for fifty-seven years ; for, in 1261, the
Greeks, under Michael Palseologus, and aided by the
Genoese^ recovered possession of the city, and Genoa ac-

COTTON AND THE COTTON TRADE.

83

quired the privileges which Venice, for a short time, had
enjoyed. The Venetians then, setting aside their religious
scruples, made a treaty with the Mahometans, and obtained
the produce of India through Egypt.

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 impor¬
tant 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 after¬
wards before the King of Portugal ; but, as it was un¬
favourably 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,

G 2

84

THE VEGETABLE LAMB OF TART ARY.

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 1 2,000 lbs. weight of it in a single house. Oviedo
says the same of Hayti, and, at the discovery of Guada-
loupe, 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

COTTON AND THE COTTON TRADE.

85

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 terri¬
tories, 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 every¬
where 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

86

THE VEGETABLE LAMB OF TART ARY.

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.
Ciega 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 ”

COTTON AND THE COTTON TRADE.

87

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 diver¬
sified 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,

ss

THE VEGETABLE LAMB OF TART ARY.

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, there¬
fore, 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 east¬
ward, 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.

Vasco da Gama during his short stay at Melinda had little
time for inquiring into the condition of the cotton trade
of the country on whose shores he had landed, and it does
not seem to have been forced upon his attention as it was
on that of Columbus. But when Odoardo Barbosa, of

COTTON AND THE COTTON TRADE.

89

Lisbon, visited South Africa eighteen years afterwards (in
1516), he found the natives wearing clothes of cotton. In
1 590, cotton cloth woven on the coast of Guinea was imported
into London from the Bight of Benin, and modern travellers
in the interior of Africa concur in the opinion that cotton
is indigenous there, and in stating that it is spun and woven
into cloth in every region of that continent From the
beauty of the dye and the designs in some of the cotton
dresses, it is justly inferred to be a manufacture of very
ancient standing. We have evidence, therefore, that in
Africa, as well as in Asia and America, the cotton plant had
a separate centre of indigenous growth, and that from a
very remote period its vegetable wool was manufactured
into useful and ornamental articles of clothing.*

The Portuguese took every possible precaution to secure
the prize which by the courage and perseverance of their
admiral they had been enabled to grasp, and to maintain
the rights which priority of discovery was, in those days,
supposed to confer. A chain of forts or factories was
established for the protection of their trade ; whilst for the
extension of it they took possession of Malacca, and their
ships visited every port from the Cape to Canton.

The Venetians saw with alarm the ruin that impended
over them through the successful rivalry in trade of the
Portuguese, but were powerless to prevent a competition
against which their merchants were unable to contend.
They therefore formed an alliance with the Turks under the
Sultans Selim and his successor, Solyman the Magnificent,
and incited them to send a fleet against the prosperous

* The cotton plant was also found indigenous in the Sandwich
Islands, the Galapagos, etc. It is doubtful whether the cotton found
in the Bornean Archipelago had not been carried eastward from
India.

90

THE VEGETABLE LAMB OF TART ARY.

Portuguese. They even allowed the Turks to cut timber
in the forests of Dalmatia with which to build their ships ;
and when twelve of these were finished, Solyman manned
them with his Janissaries, and sent them to harass the
Indian trade. The Portuguese met them with undaunted
bravery, and, after several conflicts, vanquished the Ottoman
squadron, and remained masters of the Indian Ocean.

The immediate effect of direct communication with the
East by sea was the lowering of the prices of Indian pro¬
duce. Commerce naturally sought the cheapest market.
The trade of Venice was annihilated, and the stream of
wealth that had flowed to her treasury was dried at its
source. The merchandize of India was shipped from the
most convenient ports, and conveyed cheaply, safely, and
directly to Lisbon, and thence was distributed through
Europe. A plentiful supply of Indian goods at reasonable
rates caused a rapid increase in the demand for them, and
amongst the trades to which this gave an impetus was that
in cotton.

Up to this period no cotton was woven in England ; the
small quantity that was used for candle-wicks, & c., came
either from Italy or the Levant. Linen was first woven in
England in 1253, by Flemish hands; but for nearly a
century afterwards almost all the cotton, woollen and linen
fabrics consumed there were manufactured on the continent,
and a great quantity of British wool was exported to
Flanders and Holland. Edward IIP, however, gave
encouragement to foreign skill, and in 1328 some Flemings
settled in Manchester, and commenced the weaving of
certain cloths, which, though composed of wool, were known
as “ Manchester cottons,” and thus paved the way for the
great cotton manufacture for which that part of Lancashire
is now famous.

COTTON AND THE COTTON TRADE .

9i

In 1560, England imported, through Antwerp, cotton
brought from Italy and the Levant, as well as that carried
from India to Lisbon by the Portuguese, and showed
some anxiety to compete in its manufacture with foreign
countries. An impulse was given to this ambition in 1585
by a fresh influx of Llemish workpeople, who, driven from
their own country to escape the cruelties of the Duke of
Alba during the religious persecution of the Low Countries
by the Spaniards, found an asylum in England, and brought
with them the skill in workmanship which adjoining States
had long envied.

India, however, continued far in advance of every
European country in the spinning and weaving of cotton to
nearly the middle of the eighteenth century. The activity
of the trade in her piece goods was looked upon as ruinous
to the home manufacturer, though most profitable to the
merchant, and we find Daniel Defoe, in 1708, thus la¬
menting, in his ‘ Weekly Review,’ the preference for Indian
chintz, calico, &c.

“ It crept,” he says, “ into our houses, our closets, our bed¬
chambers ; curtains, cushions, chairs, and, at last beds them¬
selves were nothing but calicoes and Indian stuffs, and, in
short, almost everything that used to be made of wool or
silk, relating either to the dress of the women or the furniture
of our houses, was supplied by the Indian trade. . . . The
several goods brought from India are made five parts in six
under our price, and, being imported and sold at an ex¬
travagant advantage, are yet capable of underselling the
cheapest thing we can set about.”

The Portuguese remained in undisturbed possession of
the lucrative trade with India till the end of the sixteenth
century, when the United Provinces of the Low Countries
challenged their pretensions to an exclusive right of com-

92

THE VEGETABLE LAMB OF TARTARV.

merce in the East; and in 1595, the Dutch East India
Company was formed. The English soon followed, and
five years later (in 1600) the British East India Company
was incorporated by Royal Charter. It immediately
obtained from the native princes permission to establish
forts and factories, and in 1624 was invested with powers
of government. The Portuguese monopoly and predomi¬
nance in the East was overturned and crushed, and England
and Holland attained supremacy in naval power and
commercial wealth.

The cotton trade did not so quickly benefit by this as
might have been expected. It remained stationary for
more than a century afterwards. But in 1738 commenced
the history of those wonderful inventions which by giving
the power of almost unlimited production to our people
revolutionized the manufacturing world. England, which
two centuries ago imported only 5000 worth of raw cotton,
now pays more than ^40,000,000 (forty million pounds)
sterling every year for her supply for twelve months ; * and
as this supply is drawn from every quarter of the globe, she

* The importation of cotton into Liverpool and London in 1886

was as follows : —

American
Brazilian
Egyptian
West India, etc.
Surat ....
Madras ....
Bengal and Rangoon

lbs.

i,3H,562,4So

33,832,400

173,340,000

9,529,910

148,306,700

26,729,200

32,324,600

Total . . . 1,741,625,290

The prices of the different kinds of cotton vary according to their
respective qualities, and are also influenced by the fluctuations of their
market value. During 1886 the best Egyptian cotton was sometimes
sold as high as y\d. per lb., and the inferior as low as 3 \d. per lb.

The total value of the cotton imported during 1886 was, as I have
said, rather over ,£40,000,000 sterling.

COTTON AND THE COTTON TRADE.

93

can appreciate the effect upon her cotton trade of the various
maritime discoveries mentioned in these pages. From the
country discovered by Columbus, and populated chiefly by
her own offspring, England receives by far the largest portion
of her requirements. The route round Cape Horn, discovered
by Fernando Magalhaens in 1520, has its advantages as
another road to the colonies and Eastern possessions of Great
Britain. The course round the Cape of Good Hope, by which
Vasco da Gama navigated his ships to Calicut, was for three
and a half centuries the main road between India and
Western Europe for personal intercourse, as well as the con¬
veyance of heavy goods, such as cotton ; and, though long,
it was direct, and comparatively cheap. But the superiority
of the first sea-route originally established by the foresight
and genius of the great Macedonian conqueror was demon¬
strated in 1845, when Lieutenant Waghorn, a young officer
in the service of the East India Company, with invincible
ardour, and determined perseverance against official obstruc¬
tion and innumerable obstacles, once more made Egypt the
causeway between Europe and India. Alexandria, built on
a site admirably chosen by its founder as a centre of
commercial traffic, and placed by the prudence of his
engineers just sufficiently far from the outflow of the Nile
to be free from the danger of its harbour being silted up by
the sediment of that muddy river, again became the port of
arrival and departure : but increased skill in seamanship
and the command of steam power having diminished the
risk and difficulty of navigating the upper part of the Red
Sea, Suez, the ancient Arsinoe, was selected for the
corresponding depbt, as offering a shorter passage by land
from sea to sea than the old road by Berenice, Coptos, and
the Nile. Waghorn bravely carried out his scheme in the
face of the most vexatious opposition and discouragement.

94

THE VEGETABLE LAMB OF TARTARY.

He built at his own expense eight halting-places in the
desert between Cairo and Suez, provided carriages for
passengers, and placed small steamers on the Nile and on
the canal of Alexandria. At last the British and the Indian
authorities, who had thrown every obstacle in his way, with
an obstinate perversity which would be almost incredible
if it were unique, graciously consented to countenance
his plans, and to allow the mail bags to and from India
to reach their destination six weeks earlier than by
their former journey. Thus Thomas Waghorn brought
England and her Eastern possessions by that much nearer
to each other, and for this achievement deserves the
gratitude of his countrymen and an honourable place in
history.

The new route was, however, unsuitable to the enormous
traffic in merchandize to and from the East. The un¬
loading of cargoes at Alexandria or Suez, their “ portage ”
across the desert, and their re-shipment on other vessels at
the further side of the Isthmus, was too tedious, laborious,
and expensive to be practicable ; therefore the “ Overland
Route ” was chiefly used for the rapid conveyance of the
European mails, passengers, and light goods, whilst the
heavy merchandize, such as cotton bales, was conveyed
round the Cape as before.

In 1869, a feat of engineering was completed, the
importance of which it is impossible to exaggerate. By
the cutting of a deep and wide canal through the narrow
strip of land which had previously barred the passage by
sea round the north-eastern corner of Africa, a water-way
was opened between the Mediterranean and the Red Sea,
by which large ships can pass from one sea to the other
without unloading their cargoes. All honour to M. de
Lesseps, who, in spite of difficulties apparently insur-

COTTON AND THE COTTON TRADE.

95

mountable, successfully accomplished this work ! He had
to contend against grave political considerations, national
prejudices and jealousies, religious fanaticism, vested
interests, and the faithless treachery and grasping avarice
of local officials. It appears to me that amidst political
complications, conflicting interests, the war of tariffs, and
financial arrangements, the credit and appreciation most
justly due to the author of the Suez Canal have been
but grudgingly given. But his posthumous fame will
be lasting, and his name will be renowned in the future
amongst those of the great path-finders and road-makers
of the world, whose discoveries and achievements have
largely benefited mankind.

The white fleeces of the wool that Alexander and his
admiral saw growing on trees in India is again conveyed to
Europe by the route planned for it by the great chieftain
of Macedon. The water-way which he possibly suggested,
and which the son of his general and confidant, Ptolemy,
endeavoured, but failed, to cut, has been successfully laid
open: And, although we now draw our chief supply of
cotton from the western country discovered by Columbus,
one result of increased facility of communication with the
East, in conjunction with perfection of machinery, is that
the vegetable wool coming therefrom, after giving em¬
ployment to thousands of our people, and adding to
our national prosperity, is returned by the same route,
manufactured into various fabrics wherewith to clothe the
people who cultivated it.

The subject of this chapter being the cotton trade, I need
offer no apology for regarding so many of the great events
of history from the point of view of their influence, espe¬
cially, upon cotton as an article of commerce. Although,
however, cotton is but a small item amongst the products

96

THE VEGETABLE LAMB OF TARTARV.

of India, the lesson which its history forces upon all
Englishmen (without distinction of religious creed, social
rank, or political party) concerning the country from which
it was first received in Europe and Asia is, that the
possession of India confers wealth and power on her
European rulers, and that Egypt is the highway to it.
The nation that holds India must grasp it firmly lest it
be snatched from its keeping, must guard carefully and
hold strongly the road to it, and must be prepared to fight
for either or both, if necessary, against any combination of
enemies. For now, as in times gone by, jealous eyes are
fixed upon it, and their owners only await an opportunity
to put in practice that which Wordsworth makes his Rob
Roy call

“the good old rule,

. the simple plan,

That he shall take who has the power.

And he shall keep who can ! ”

( 97 )

APPENDIX.

A (p. 2).

Sir John Mandeville.

Sir John Mandeville, or Maundeville, was of a family that came
into England with the Conqueror. He is said to have been a
man of learning and substance, and had studied physic and
natural philosophy. He was also a good and conscientious man,
and was, moreover, the greatest traveller of his time. John Bale,
in his catalogue of British writers, says of him that “ he was so
well given to the study of learning from his childhood that he
seemed to plant a good part of his felicitie in the same ; for he
supposed that the honour of his birth would nothing availe him
except he could render the same more honourable by his know¬
ledge in good letters. He therefore well grounded himself in
religion by reading the Scriptures, and also applied his studies to
the art of physicke, a profession worthy a noble wit ; but amongst
other things he was ravished with a mighty desire to see the
greater parts of the world, as Asia and Africa. Having provided
all things necessary for his journey, he departed from his country
in the yeere of Christ 1322, and, as another Ulysses, returned
home after the space of thirty-four years, and was then known to
a very few. In the time of his travaile he was in Scythia, the
greater and lesser Armenia, Egypt, both Libyas, Arabia, Syria,
Media, Mesopotamia, Persia, Chaldea, Greece, Illyrium, Tartarie
and divers other kingdoms of the World, and having gotten by
this means the knowledge of the languages, lest so many and
great varieties and things miraculous whereof himself had been
an eie-witness should perish in oblivion, he committed his whole
travell of thirty-four yeeres to writing in three divers tongues—

II

98

APPENDIX.

English, French, and Latine. Being arrived again in England,
having seen the wickedness of that age, he gave out this speech ;■ —
‘ In our time,’ he said, 1 it may be spoken more truly than of old
that virtue is gone ; the Church is under foot ; the clergie is in
erreur ; the Devill raigneth, and Simone beareth the sway.’ ”

A man who in the first part of the fourteenth century could
conceive, and for thirty-four years persist in carrying out, the
intention of travelling from one country to another over a great
part of the habitable globe, must have possessed remarkable
qualifications. Indeed, his achievements were so extraordinary,
and his narrative agrees in so many particulars with that of
the travels of Marco Polo, that it has been suggested that he
may never have gone to the East at all, but compiled his book
from the journals of his predecessor. But it seems to me
impossible to doubt the correctness of Mr. Halliwell’s opinion
that this suggestion is wholly unjustifiable, and that, after perusal
of the volume, the judgment of any impartial reader would re¬
pudiate such a supposition. Sir John Mandeville met with
credit and respect in his own day, and the transcriber on vellum
of a small folio MS. copy of his book, written in double columns
certainly not more than twenty years after his death, prefaces it
in a manner which shows that he entertained no doubt con¬
cerning it.

There are several editions of Sir John Mandeville’s account of
his ‘Voiages.’ The most useful to the general reader are,
i st, that printed in London, in 1725, from a manuscript in the
Cottonian collection; 2nd, a reprint of the above, with a few
notes by Mr. J. O. Halliwell, and various illustrations, which are
facsimile copies by F. W. Fairholt, from the older editions and
manuscripts in the Harleian collection, published by Lumley in
1837 ; and, 3rd, a reprint of this later edition, published by
F. S. Ellis, in 1866.

Sir John Mandeville died at Liege on the 17th of November,
1371. His fellow-townsmen of St. Albans appear to have believed
that his body was brought home to the place of his birth, and
buried in St. Albans Abbey, for the following doggrel verses were
inscribed as his epitaph on one of the pillars there : —

SIR JOHN MANDEVILLE.

99

“All ye that pass by, on this pillar cast eye,

This Epitaph read if you can ;

’Twill tell you a Tombe once stood in this room
Of a brave, spirited man,

Sir John Mandevil by name, a knight of great fame,

Born in this honoured Towne ;

Before him was none that ever was knowne
For travaile of so high renowne.

As the Knights in the Temple cross-legged in Marble,

In armour with sword and with shield,

So was this Knight grac’d which Time hath defac’d
That nothing but Ruines doth yield.

His travailes being done, he shines like the Sun
In heavenly Canaan.

To which blessed place the Lord, of His grace,

Bring us all, man after man.”

There is no doubt, however, that Sir John Mandeville was
buried in the Abbey of the Gulielmites in the town of Liege,
where he died; for Abrahamus Ortelius, in his ‘ Itinerarium
Belgiae’ (p. 1 6), has printed the following epitaph there set over
him : —

“ Hie jacet vir nobilis Dominus Johannes de Mandeville, aliter
dictus ad Bar bam, Miles, Dominus de Campdi , natus de Anglid,
medicine professor, devotissimus orator, et bonorum largissimus
pauperibus erogator j qui toto quasi orbe luslrato Leodii diem viti sui
clausit extremum Aimo Domini 1371, Mensis Novembris die 17.”

Ortelius adds, that upon the same stone with the epitaph is
engraven a man in armour with a forked beard, treading upon a
lion, and at his head a hand of one blessing him, and these words
in old French: “ Vos ki paseis sor mi, pour l amour Deix proies
por mi ” — that is, “Ye that pass over me, for the love of God pray

for me.” There is also a void place for an escutcheon, whereon,

*

Ortelius was told, there was formerly a brass plate with the arms
of the deceased knight engraven thereon — viz., a Lion argent with a
Lunet gules, at his breast, in a Field azure, and a Border engraled
or. The clergy of the Abbey also exhibited the knives, the horse-
furniture, and the spurs used by Sir John Mandeville in his
travels. John Weever, in his ‘ Ancient Funeral Monuments’

H ?

TOO

APPENDIX.

(p. 5 68); says that he saw the above epitaph at Liege, and also
the following verses hanging near by on a tablet : —

“ A liud

Hoc jacet in tumulo cui totus patria vivo
Orbis erat : totium quem peragrasse ferunt
Anglus , Equesque fuit j num ille Britannus Ulysses
Dicatur , Graio clarus , Ulysse magis.

Moihbus, ingenio, candor e , et sanguine clarus ,

Et vere cultor Religionis erat

Nomen si quceras est Mandevil , Indus, Ar absque,

Sat notum dicit finibus esse suisP

B (p. 8).

Odoricus of Friuli.

Odoricus did not write his account of his travels with his own
hand, but dictated it to his brother friar, William de Solanga, who
wrote it as Odoricus related it. Having “ testified and borne
witness to the Rev. Father Guidolus, minister of the province of
S. Anthony, in the Marquesate of Treviso (being by him required
upon his obedience so to do), that all that he described he had
seen with his own eyes, or heard the same reported by credible
and substantial witnesses,” Odoricus prepared to set out on
another and a longer journey “ into all the countries of the
heathen.” He, therefore, determined to present himself to Pope
John XXII., and to obtain his benediction on his missionary
enterprise. Accordingly, at the commencement of the year
1331, he left Utina with this intention. On his way, however,
he was met, near Pisa, by an old man who, hailing him by his
name, told him that he had known him in India, and warned
him to return to his monastery, “ for that in ten days thence
he would depart from this present world.” Having said this,
he vanished from sight. Odoricus obeyed the admonition, and
returned to Utina “in perfect health, feeling no crazednesse nor
infirmity of body. And being in his convent the tenth day after

ODORICUS— VON HERBERS TEIN — S CA LIGER.

IOI

the forsayd vision, having received the Communion, and prepared
himself unto God, yea, being strong and sound of body, he
happily rested in the Lord, whose sacred departure was signified
to the Pope aforesaid under the hand of the public notary of
Utina.” Odoricus died January 14th, 1331, and was beatified.

C (p. 11).

SlGISMUND VON HERBERSTEIN.

Sigismund von Herberstein was born at Vippach, in Styria, in
i486. He distinguished himself so greatly in the war against the
Turks that the Emperor entrusted him with various missions,
and made him successively commandant of the Styrian cavalry,
privy councillor, and president of finance of Austria. During two
periods of residence at Moscow, in all about sixteen months, as
ambassador from the Emperor Maximilian to the Grand Duke of
Muscovy, Vasilez Ivanovich, he earnestly studied and sagaciously
observed everything that came under his notice, and neglected
nothing which could instruct or profit him. His work on Russia,
above referred to, is universally regarded as the best ancient
history of that State. He renounced public life in 1555, and
died in 1556.

D (p. 14).

Julius C^usar Scaliger.

Julius Caesar Scaliger, born in 1484, probably at Padua, was one
of the most celebrated of the many great writers of the sixteenth
century. He was a man of real talent, but of unbounded vanity
and unscrupulous ambition. Originally baptized “Jules,” he
added “ Caesar ” to his name, and, to enhance his own merits by
the eclat of high birth, made for himself a false genealogy, and

102

APPENDIX.

asserted that he was the hero of adventures in which he had taken
no part. In order to force himself into notice he attacked
Erasmus, and in two harangues, which the latter disdained to
answer, used towards him the grossest invectives. Scaliger next
directed his insolent hostility against Girolamo Cardano. Jealous
of the fame of the great Pavian physician and mathematician, he,
in a critique containing more insults than arguments, ferociously
assailed Cardano’s treatise, “ De Subtilitate” ; and so exaggerated
was the estimate he formed of the effect of his diatribes on the
objects of his malice, that when Erasmus died, and a false
rumour of the decease of Cardano was spread abroad, he believed,
or affected to believe, that the death of both had been caused by
his conduct towards them, and in the course of a fulsome eulogy
expressed his regret for having deprived the world of letters of
two such valuable lives. Scaliger died in 1558, aged seventy-
five years.

E (p. 21).

Jans Janszoon Strauss, otherwise Jean de Struys.

Jean de Struys, in 1647, shipped at Amsterdam as sailmaker’s
mate on board a vessel bound to Genoa. On arriving there the
ship was bought by the Republic, equipped as a privateer, and
sent to the East Indies. She was, however, captured by the
Dutch, and Struys took service on board a ship belonging to the
Dutch East India Company, and after visiting Siam, Japan,
Formosa, &c., he returned to Holland in 1681. Having stayed
at home with his father for four years, he went to sea again, but
finding at Venice an armed flotilla on the point of departure to
fight the Turks, he joined it, was several times taken prisoner,
and as often escaped or was rescued. In 1657 he returned to
Holland, was married, and led a quiet life for ten years, but
hearing that the Tzar was fitting out at Amsterdam some vessels
to go to Persia by the Caspian Sea, “ nothing,” to use his own
words, “ could hold him back.” He therefore started in a vessel

JEAN DE STRUYS—JOHN BELL.

103

bound to the Baltic, landed at Riga, and found his way overland,
through Moscow and by the Oka and Volga to Astrachan. In
June, 1670, the fleet in which he served set sail for the Caspian.
His vessel went ashore on the coast of Daghestan, and he was
made prisoner and taken to the Kan or Tchamkal of Bayance, by
whom he was sold as a slave to a Persian. After passing through
the possession of several masters he was bought by a Georgian,
an ambassador to the King of Poland, who allowed him to
purchase his freedom. On the 30th of October, 1671, he joined
a caravan travelling to Ispahan, made his way to the coast,
embarked for Batavia, and, after innumerable adventures, arrived
in Holland in 1673, and retired to Ditmarsch, where he died in
1694. His memoirs of his life were published in Dutch, at
Amsterdam, in 1677, and translated into German in the following
year, and into French in 1681.

F (p. 28).

John Bell of Autermonv.

Furnished with letters of introduction to Dr. Areskine, chief
physician and privy councillor to the Czar Peter I., Bell “ em¬
barked at London in July, 1714, on board the Prosperity of
Ramsgate, Captain Emerson, for St. Petersburg.” As the Czar
was about to send an ambassador, Artemis Petronet Valewsky,
to “the Sophy of Persia, Schach Hussein,” Bell, by the good
offices of Dr. Areskine, obtained an appointment in his suite,
and set out from St. Petersburg on the 15th of July, 1715. He
kept a diary, and was evidently an enlightened, discriminating
and careful observer.

304

APPENDIX.

G (p. 52).

The Three Black Crows.
By Dr. John Byrom.

The following is the story referred to in the text. It well
illustrates the process by which the first rumour concerning cotton
— that “ wool as white and soft as that of a lamb grew on trees ”
— was exaggerated to a statement that “ lambs grew on certain
trees,” and were, therefore, partly animal and partly vegetable.

Two honest tradesmen, meeting in the Strand,

One took the other briskly by the hand.

“ Hark ye,” said he, “ ’tis an odd story this
About the crows ! ” “I don’t know what it is,”

Replied his friend. “No? I’m surprised at that,—

Where I come from it is the common chat ;

But you shall hear an odd affair indeed !

And that it happened they are all agreed :

Not to detain you from a thing so strange,

A gentleman who lives not far from ’Change,

This week, in short, as all the Alley knows,

Taking a vomit, threw up three black crows ! ”

“ Impossible ! ” “ Nay, but ’tis really true ;

I had it from good hands, and so may you.”

“ From whose, I pray ? ” So, having named the man,
Straight to inquire his curious comrade ran.

“ Sir, did you tell ? ” — relating the affair —

“ Yes, sir, I did ; and, if ’tis worth your care,

’Twas Mr. — such a one — who told it me ;

But, by-the-bye, ’twas two black crows, not three I ”

Resolved to trace so wonderous an event,

Quick to the third the virtuoso went.

“ Sir,” — and so forth. “ Why, yes ; the thing is fact,

Though in regard to number not exact ;

It was not two black crows, ’twas only one !

The truth of which you may depend upon ;

The gentleman himself told me the case.”

“ Where may I find him ? ” “ Why in — ” such a place.

Away he went, and having found him out,
u Sir, be so good as to resolve a doubt ; ”

THE THREE CROWS— ALEXANDRINE LIBRARY. 105

Then to his last informant he referred,

And begged to know if true what he had heard.

“ Did you, sir, throw up a black crow ? ” “ Not I ! ”

“ Bless me, how people propagate a lie !

Black crows have been thrown up, three , two, and one;
And here, I find, all comes at last to none /

Did you say nothing of a crow at all ? ”

“ Crow ? — crow ? — perhaps I might ; now I recall
The matter over.” “ And pray, sir, what was’t ? ”

“ Why, I was horrid sick, and at the last
I did throw up, and told my neighbours so,

Something that was — as black , sir, as a crow.”

H (p. 71).

The Destruction of the Alexandrine Library.

This magnificent collection, founded by Ptolemy Soter, and
added to by his successors, was twice partially dispersed before its
total destruction by the Saracens. A great portion of it was
burned during the siege of Alexandria by Julius Caesar, b.c. 48.
The lost volumes were in some measure replaced by Antony,
who (b.c. 36) presented to Cleopatra, the library of the Kings of
Pergamus. At the death of Cleopatra, Alexandria passed into the
power of the Romans, and this second collection was partly
destroyed by fire when the Emperor Theodosius I. suppressed
paganism, a.d. 390. The Alexandrine Library met its memorable
fate in 638, when, after a vigorous resistance for fourteen months,
the city was taken by Amru, the general of Caliph Omar.
Abdallah, the Arabian historian, and favourite of Saladin (1200),
gives the following account of this catastrophe. “ John Philo-
ponus, surnamed the Grammarian, being at Alexandria when the
Saracens entered the city, was admitted to familiar intercourse
with Amru, and presumed to solicit a gift, inestimable in his
opinion, but contemptible in that of the barbarians, — and that
was the royal library. Amru was inclined to gratify his wish,
but his rigid integrity scrupled to alienate the least object without

io6

APPENDIX.

the consent of the Caliph. He accordingly wrote to Omar,
whose well-known answer is a notable example of ignorant
fanaticism. ‘ If/ said he, ‘ these writings of the Greeks agree
with the Koran they are useless, and need not be preserved ; if
they disagree with the book of God they are pernicious, and
ought to be destroyed.’ The sentence of destruction was
executed with blind obedience ; the volumes of paper or parch¬
ment were distributed to the 4,000 baths of the city ; and so
great was their number that six weeks was barely sufficient time
for the consumption of this precious fuel.”

( io7 )

INDEX.

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Ahasuerus, cotton hangings in the palace of, at Shushan, 66
Alexander the Great, descent of the Indus and Hydaspes by, 68

sagacity and wise policy of, 67, 72
opens up the Euphrates and Tigris, 71
selects the site of Alexandria, 68
Europe indebted to, for the introduction of cotton,
72

Alexandria made the centre of the Indian trade, 72

„ Lighthouse, Library, and Temple of Serapis at, 71
„ destruction of the Library of — Appendix H, 105
Amasis II., Corslet padded with cotton presented to Sparta by King, 46
Aristobulus mentions “ a tree bearing wool, which was carded,” 47
„ report by, of the great heat at Susiana-Shushan, 66
Arrian’s account of the cotton trade in his day, 73

Barnacle Geese, the fable of, compared with that of the Barometz, 52
Barometz the, described by Sir John Mandeville, 2

Claude Duret, 5, 16
Talmudical writers, 6
Odoricus of Friuli, 8
Fortunio Liceti, 11
Juan Eusebio Nieremberg, 11
Sigismund von Herberstein, 1 1
Guillaume Postel, 13
Michel, the Interpreter, 13
Giralomo Cardano, 13
Julius Caesar Scaliger, 14
Antonius Deusingius, 15
Athanasius Kircher, 21
Jean de Struys, 21

in verse by Guillaume de Saluste, Sieur du Bartas, 17
Joshua Sylvester, translator of the above, 18
Dr. Erasmus Darwin, 35
Dr. De la Croix, 36

sought for by Dr. Engelbrecht Kaempfer, 23

„ John Bell, of Autermony, 28, Appendix F >
103

„ the Abbe Chappe d’Auteroche, 30

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INDEX.

Barometz, origin of the word, 23
„ the fable of the, 1

„ „ „ compared with that of the “ Barnacle Geese,”

52

„ „ „ its various phases and transformations, 1, 53

Bartas, the Sieur du, lines by, on the Barometz, 17
Bell, John, seeks ineffectually the “ Vegetable Lamb,” 28
Borametz. See Barometz.

Breyn, Dr., describes to the Royal Society his Chinese artificial
“ Lamb,” 30

British Museum, specimen of the “ Scythian Lamb ” in, 24, 43
Buckley, Mr., Chinese articles presented to the Royal Society by, 27
„ „ his Chinese dog fashioned from rhizome of a fern, 27

Canal from Suez to the East Nile commenced by Ptolemy Phila-

delphus, 7 1

„ „ „ Aden, constructed by De Lesseps, 94

Cape route, the, discovered by Vasco da Gama, 83, 88
Cardano describes the “ Vegetable Lamb,” 13

„ exposes the unreasonableness of believing the fable, 14
Central America, ancient use of cotton in, 85, 86
Chappe d’Auteroche, the Abbe seeks for the “ Barometz,” 30
Chinese artificial dogs made from root-stocks of ferns, 27, 28, 34, 39, 44
Columbus finds cotton in use in America, 84
Cotton, its use of great antiquity in India, 65
reaches Persia from India, 66

hangings of, in the palace of Ahasuerus at Shushan, 66 •
found in use in India by Alexander the Great, 58
piece-goods introduced into Europe by the Macedonians, 72
shipped from Patala and Barygaza to Aduli, 72
conveyed by a circuitous coasting route, 73

in a straight course by Hippalus, 73
by the Romans via Palmyra, 74
the trade in, through Egypt, checked by the Saracens, 74
ancient Egyptians unacquainted with, 75

breast-plate padded with, sent by King Amasis to Sparta, 46, 75
Mark Antony’s soldiers wear, in Egypt, 76
Egyptians, till the 17th century, importers, not growers of, 77
in Rome and Greece manufactured by slaves, 78
vestments presented to ancient Emperors of China, 79
manufactured by the Moors and Saracens in Spain, 80
paper made from, by the Spanish Arabs, 80
manufacture in Spain relapsed after the conquest of Grenada, 80
conveyed by Tartar caravans from India to Europe, 56, 57, 58,
81, 82

5?

INDEX.

109

1)

Cotton conveyed again through Egypt by the Venetians, 82

manufacture in Saxony, the Netherlands, and Germany, 83
found by Columbus in daily use in the West Indies, 84
„ Magalhaens in use in Brazil, 84
used by the ancient Mexicans and Peruvians, 85, 86
mummy cloths brought from ancient Peruvian tombs, 86
imported into England in the 16th century through Antwerp, 91
statistics, 92

now crosses from India by the route planned by Alexander, 95
Cotton-plant, the, described by Theophrastus, 47

Pomponius Mela, 48
Julius Pollux, 49

botany of the, 63
the, indigenous to India, 64
„ noticed in India by Alexander and his army, 58
culture of the, in China encouraged by the Mongols, 79
Arabia and Syria, 77
Spain by the Saracens and Moors, 80
„ relapsed after the conquest of
Grenada, 80

the, still grows wild in the Peninsula, 81
Cotton-wool the fleece of the “ Scythian Lamb,” 62
Ctesias writes of the “ trees that bear wool,” 46

1)

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Danielovitsch, Demetrius, describes the “ Vegetable Lamb ” to Von
Herberstein, 12

Darwin, Dr. Erasmus, lines by, on the “ Barometz,” 35
De la Croix, Dr., Latin lines by, on the Barometz, 36
Deusingius, Antonius, disbelieves the animal-plant monstrosity, 15
Dicksonia barometz a tree-fern, 40

toy dogs made from rhizomes of, by the Chinese,
4i

does not grow in Tartary or Scythia, 44
Duret, Claude, describes the “ Barometz,” 3

avows his entire belief in the rumour, 16

5?

East India Company incorporated, 92

Egypt, the route from India to Europe planned by Alexander, 68, 93, 95
„ conquest of, by the Saracens, 7
„ the country of flax, 75, 79
„ the high road to India to be guarded, 96
Egyptian maritime traffic with the East lasted 1000 years, 74
Egyptians, the ancient, unacquainted with cotton, 75

„ till the 17th century importers not growers of cotton, 77

r io

INDEX.

Ferns, models of dogs made of, by the Chinese, 27, 28, 34, 39, 44
„ their economic value, 40, 41
Flemish weavers settle in Manchester, 90

General belief in the “ Vegetable Lamb,” 2

Hebrew, ancient, version of the fable, 6

Herberstein, Sigismund von, describes the “ Vegetable Lamb,” n
Herodotus writes of trees bearing for their fruit fleeces of wool, 46
Hippalus notices the monsoons, 73

>5

India, use of cotton in, mentioned by Herodotus, 46

Ctesias, 46
Nearchus, 46
Aristobulus, 47
Strabo, 47

the Indo-Scythia of the ancients, 57
cotton indigenous to, 64

trade with opened by Alexander via Egypt, 68
„ via the Euphrates and Tigris, 71
„ restored to Egypt by the Venetians, 82
the Cape route to, discovered by Vasco da Gama, 83, 88
Indo-Scythia, identical with Scinde and the Punjaub, 57

V

Japanese artificial mermaids compared with Chinese toy-dogs, 42, 54
Jaduah, or Jeduah, the, 7

Kircher, Athanasius, declares the Barometz to be a plant, 21
Kaempfer, Dr. Engelbrecht, searches ineffectually for the Vegetable

Lamb, 23

„ „ „ suggests that the fable refers to Astrachan

lamb skins, 23

Lamb, the “ Scythian,” why so called, 56
„ „ „ see “ Barometz.”

„ „ “Tartarian,” why so called, 59

„ „ „ see “ Barometz.”

„ „ Vegetable, its fleece cotton wool, 60

„ „ „ see “ Barometz.”

Lesseps, De, constructs the Suez Canal, 94

Liceti, Fortunio, says the “Vegetable Lamb” was “as white as
snow,” 11

Loureiro, Juan de, describes the making of artificial dogs from ferns, 44

MaGALHAENS, Fernando, discovers the route round Cape Horn, 84
Manchester, Flemish weavers settle in, 90

INDEX.

1 1 1

Mandeville, Sir John, describes the “Vegetable Lamb,” 2

„ „ „ biographical sketch of — Appendix A, 97

Mela, Pomponius, describes the cotton-plant, 48
Mermaids, Japanese, compared with Chinese dogs, 42, 54
Mexicans, the ancient, use of cotton by, 85 86

Michel, the Interpreter, describes the “ Vegetable Lamb ” and its uses,
13

Monsoons, the, noticed by Hippalus, 73
Museum, British, supposed “ Scythian Lamb ” in the, 24, 43
„ Natural History. See Museum, British.

„ Hunterian, R. Coll. Surgeons, supposed Scythian Lamb in the,
43

Nearchus mentions the “ wool-bearing trees,” 46
„ descent of the Indus by, 68
Nieremberg, on the “ Vegetable Lamb,” 11

Odoricus of Friuli describes the “ Vegetable Lamb,” 8

„ „ curious incident in the life of — Appendix B, 100

Peruvians, the ancient, use of cotton by, 86, 87

Pliny confuses cotton with flax, 48

Pollux, Julius, describes the cotton-plant, 49

Postel, Guillaume, informs von Herberstein of the “ wool-bearing
plant,” 13

Ptolemy Soter follows Alexander’s policy and takes possession of

Egypt, 7 1

„ „ founds the lighthouse, library and temple at Alex¬

andria, 71

„ Philadelphus commences a canal from Suez to the East Nile,
7 1

Royal Society, supposed “ Scythian Lamb ” laid before the, by Sir
Hans Sloane, 24

Royal Society, supposed “Scythian Lamb” laid before the, by Dr.
Breyn, 30

Saluste, Guillaume de, Sieur du Bartas. See “ Bartas.”

Scaliger, Julius Caesar, attacks Cardano on the subject of the
“ Barometz,” 14

Scythian Lamb, the, why so called, 56
}J „ „ see “ Barometz.”

Scythians, the, describe snow as “ feathers,” 51
Scythia-Indo the same as Scinde and the Punjaub, 57
in Asia identical with Tartary, 57

I 12

INDEX.

Scythia Parva identical with certain districts of Silistria and Bessarabia,

57

Shushan, cotton hangings in the palace of Ahasuerus at, 66
Sloane, Sir Hans, lays before the Royal Society a supposed “ Scythian

Lamb,” 24

„ „ „ identification of the above by, unsatisfactory, 28

„ „ „ bequest by, to the Nation, 43

Strabo mentions the “ wool-bearing trees,’’ 47
Strauss Jans Janszoon. See “ Struys.”

Struys, Jean de, mentions the “ Barometz,” 21

„ „ doubts the “ animal ” version of the story, 22

Suez Canal completed by De Lesseps, 94

Talmudical writers mention the “Barometz,” under the name of
“ Jaduah,” 7

Tartary identical with Scythia in Asia, 57

Tartar caravans, cotton conveyed by, to Europe, 56, 57, 58, 81, 82
Tartarian Lamb, the, why so called, 59
„ ,, „ see “ Barometz-”

Theophrastus writes of the cultivation of the “ wool-bearing tree,” 47
„ exactly describes the cotton-plant, 48

Trees, wool-bearing, described by Herodotus, 46

Ctesias, 46

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Nearchus, 46
Aristobulus, 47
Strabo, 47
Theophrastus, 47
Pomponius Mela, 48
Pliny, 48
J ulius Pollux, 49

Vasco da Gama opens the Cape route to India, 83, 88
Vegetable Lamb, the, its fleece cotton wool, 60
„ „ „ see “ Barometz.”

Waghorn, Lieut., opens the route across the desert, 93
Wool-bearing trees. See Trees, wool-bearing.

Zavolha, the, a renowned Tartar horde, 12, 14

LONDON I PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED,
STAMFORD STREET AND CHARING CROSS.

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