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borders of ponds and banks of streams. It is extensively cultivated as a rainy-season crop over most of India — on the Himalayas to 6500 feet. It thrives on light sandy soils and is often cultivated when the rains are over, on the banks of rich silt deposited by rivers. The yield is fifty fold in good soil. It is the quickest-growing millet, harvested sometimes in six weeks, and is consumed chiefly by the poorer classes, for whom it is useful because it ripens early and affords a cheap article of food before bajra and the other millets.
41. Cotton and the Indian cloths. — These were the monache, molochine , and sagmatogene of 6 and 14. The account given by Tavernier throws some light on the earlier production. He says {.op. cit., II, xii) “White cotton cloths come to Renonsari (near Surat) and Broach, where they have the means of bleaching them in large fields, on account of the quantity of lemons growing in the neighborhood. . . . The cloths are 21 cubits long when crude, but only 20 cubits when bleached. There are both broad and narrow kinds. T he broad are 1}6 cubit wide, and the piece is 20 cubits long.” And again: “The cotton cloths to be dyed red, blue, or black, are taken uncolored to Agra and Ahmadabad, because these two towns are near the place where the indigo is made, which is used in dyeing. The cheaper kinds are exported to the coast of Melinde (the Azania of the Periplus), and they constitute the principal trade done by the Governor of Mozambique, who sells them to the Kaffirs to carry into the country of the Abyssins and the kingdom of Saha, because these people, not using soap, need only rinse out these cloths.”
Vincent’s translation of sagmatogene by “stuffing,” that is, un- spun cotton, is supported by Tavernier, who says “the unspun cottons from Gujarat do not go to Europe, being too bulky and of too small value, and they are only exported to the Red Sea, Hormus, and Bassora. ’ ’
Marco Polo (III, 26) says of this locality: “They have also a great deal of cotton. Their cotton trees are of very great size, grow- ing six paces high, and attaining to an age of 20 years. ( Gossypium arboreum . ) It is to be observed, however, that, when the trees are so old as that, the cotton is not good to spin, but only to quilt or stuff beds withal. Up to the age of 12 years, indeed, the trees give good spinning cotton, but from that age to 20 years the produce is inferior. ’ ’
Pliny also (XII, 21) quotes from Theophrastus a description of the tree cotton, contrasting it with silk: “trees that bear wool, but of a different nature from those of the Seres; as in these trees the leaves produce nothing at all, and indeed might very readily be taken
