Part 4 (1/2)
The fibre of wool varies in diameter, the Saxon merino measuring 1/1370 of an inch, and the Southdown, 1/1100. l.u.s.trous wool, it is said, should be long and strong; but if it is very fine it is not long. Strong wool may be as much as twenty inches in length. The wool of the best sheep adheres closely, and can only be removed by shearing; but there are varieties of sheep which shed their wool, as, for instance, the Persian, which drop the whole of their fleeces between January and May, when feeding on the new gra.s.s.
This, then, is wool, the first use of which for cloth-making is lost in antiquity. There is no doubt that the pastoral industry is the oldest industry in the world; for even when the fruits of the earth could be eaten without tillage and without labour, the flocks and herds required care and attention. The shepherd may be regarded as the earliest pioneer of industry, as he has been for centuries the centre of fanciful romance, and the personification of far from romantic fact. The old legend of Jason and the Golden Fleece is in itself evidence of the antiquity of the knowledge of the value of wool; and much as the mythologists make out of the legend, there are some who hold that it merely is meant to record how the Greeks imported a superior kind of sheep from the Caucasus and made money thereby.
Australia is now the land of the Golden Fleece, and millions of money have been made there out of the docile sheep. It is not indigenous, of course, to the land of the Southern Cross, where the only mammal known when Europeans discovered it was the kangaroo. Mr James Bonwick, a gentleman well known in Australian literature, gathered together many records of the introduction of the sheep into Australia, and of the marvellous development of the pastoral industry there in his very interesting book, _The Romance of the Wool-trade_.
But, first, as to the different kinds of sheep. The Bighorn is the wild-sheep of Kamchatka, and it may be taken for granted that all species of the domestic sheep were at one time wild, or are descended from wild tribes. When the Aryan Hindus invaded India, it is recorded that they took their flocks with them; but whether the wild-sheep still to be found on the hills of Northern India are the descendants of wanderers from these flocks, or descendants of the progenitors of them, we do not pretend to say.
Chief among the domesticated sheep of the British Isles is the Southdown, whose characteristics used to be--although we are told they are changed somewhat now--thin chine, low fore-end, and rising backbone, a small hornless head, speckled face, thin lips, woolled ears, and bright eyes. The wool should 'be short, close, curled, fine, and free from spiry projecting fibres.' Then there are the Romney Marsh, the Cotswold, the Lincoln, the Leicester, and the Hardwick sheep, each with its distinctive marks and value. The Welsh sheep have long necks, high shoulders, narrow b.r.e.a.s.t.s, long bushy tails, and small bones; the wool is not first cla.s.s, but the mutton is excellent. The Irish native sheep are of two kinds, the short-woolled and long-woolled; but Southdowns and Leicesters have been so long crossed with them that their idiosyncrasies are no longer marked. The Shetland sheep are supposed to have come from Denmark, but have also been crossed with English and Scotch varieties.
In Scotland, the Cheviot and the Blackfaced are the two ruling types.
The Cheviot is a very handsome animal, with long body, white face, small projecting eyes, and well-formed legs. The wool is excellent, as the 'tweed'-makers of the Border know, but is not so soft as that of the English Southdowns. The Blackfaced is the familiar form we see in the Highlands, supposed to have come originally 'from abroad,' but now regarded as the native sheep of Scotland. It is a hardy animal, accustomed to rough food and rough weather, with a fine deep chest, broad back, slender legs, attractive face, and picturesque horns. The wool is not so good as that of the Cheviot variety, but the mutton is better. Of course, English varieties have been largely crossed with the two native Scotch kinds; yet these still remain distinct, and are easily recognisable.
As long ago as the time of the Emperor Constantine, the wool of English sheep had a high reputation, and had even then found its way to Rome. Of English monarchs, Edward III. seems to have been the first to endeavour to stimulate the pastoral industry by the manufacture of woollen cloths and the export of raw wool. But Henry VIII. thought that sheep-breeding had been carried too far, and the farmers were making too much money out of it; so he decreed that no one should keep more than two thousand four hundred sheep at one time, and that no man should be allowed to occupy more than two farms. In the time of Charles II. the export of both sheep and wool was strictly prohibited. As late as 1788, there were curious prohibitory enactments with reference to sheep; and the date is interesting, because it was the date of the settlement of New South Wales. There was a fine of three pounds upon the carrying off of any sheep from the British Isles, except for use on board s.h.i.+p; and even between the islands and the mainland of Scotland, or across a tidal river, sheep could not be transported without a special permit and the execution of a bond that the animals were not for exportation. Indeed, no sheep could be shorn within five miles of the sea-coast without the presence of a revenue officer, to see that the law was not evaded.
It is not surprising, then, that the first sheep settled in Australia--the only great pastoral country that has never had a native variety--did not go from England. It is very curious that in Australia, New Zealand, and Tasmania, where now lies a great portion of the pastoral wealth of the world, there never was any animal in the smallest degree resembling a sheep until some enterprising Britons took it there.
The first sheep introduced into Australia were from the Cape and from India. The s.h.i.+ps which went out with the convicts of 1788 had a few sheep on board for the officers' mess, which were presumably consumed before the Cape of Good Hope was reached. There, some animals were procured for the new settlement. The Cape at the time was in the hands of the Dutch, who had large flocks of sheep and immense herds of cattle.
The sheep they had were not imported from Europe, but were the native breed they had found in the hands of the aborigines when the Dutch colony was founded one hundred and thirty years previously.
The native African sheep is of the fat-tail kind. Wool was not then an item of wealth in the Dutch colony; but the fat tails were appreciated as an excellent subst.i.tute for b.u.t.ter. All over Africa and over a large part of Asia, varieties of the fat-tail species are still to be found.
In Tibet they abound; and the Turcomans have vast flocks of them. But Tibet has also other varieties, and notably one very like the llama of Peru, with a very soft and most useful fleece, providing the famous Tibetan wool. In Palestine and Syria the fat-tail sheep is abundant; and of the Palestine breed it is recorded that they 'have a monstrous round of fat, like a cus.h.i.+on, in place of the tail, which sometimes weighs thirty or forty pounds. The wool of this sheep is coa.r.s.e, much tangled, and felted, and mixed with coa.r.s.e dark-coloured hair.'
Although the first sheep taken to Australia were from the Cape, the most important of the earlier consignments were from India, the nearest British possession to the new colony. Indeed, for over thirty years Australia was ecclesiastically within the see of the Bishop of Calcutta, and letters to England usually went by way of the Indian capital.
The Bengalee sheep are described as 'small, lank, and thin, and the colour of three-fourths of each flock is black or dark gray. The quality of the fleece is worse than the colour; it is harsh, thin, and wiry to a very remarkable degree, and ordinarily weighs but half a pound.' Not a very promising subject, one would think, for the Australian pastures, but the flesh was excellent; and climate and crossing of breeds work wonders.
That which gave value to the Australian breed of sheep, however, was the introduction of the Spanish merino, which in time found its way to the Cape, and thence to Australia. There is an old tradition that the famous merino sheep of Spain came originally from England; but it appears from Pliny and others that Spain had a reputation for fine wool long before the Roman occupation. The Spanish word merino originally meant an inspector of sheepwalks, and is derived from the Low Latin _majorinus_, a steward of the household. Some writers believe that the merino came originally from Barbary, probably among the flocks of the Moors when they captured Southern Spain. The merinos are considered very voracious, and not very prolific; they yield but little milk, and are very subject to cutaneous diseases. Youatt describes two varieties of them in Spain, and the wool is of remarkable fineness.
About the year 1790, the Spanish merino began to be imported into the Cape, and a few years later a certain Captain Waterhouse was sent from Sydney to Capetown to buy stock for the colonial establishment. He thought the service in which he was engaged 'almost a disgrace to an officer;' but when he left the Cape again, he brought with him 'forty-nine head of black-cattle, three mares, and one hundred and seven sheep'--arriving at Port Jackson with the loss of nine of the cattle and about one-third of the sheep. Three cows, two mares, and twenty-four of the sheep belonged to that officer, and with this voyage he founded not only his own fortune, but also the prosperity of the great Australian colony. Further importations followed; and a Captain Macarthur, early in the present century, went home to London to endeavour to form a company to carry on sheep-rearing on an extensive scale. He did not succeed, and returned to Port Jackson to pursue his enterprise himself. Eventually he obtained the concession of a few square miles of land, and thus became the father of Australian 'squatting.' He located himself on the Nepean River, to the south-west of Sydney; and to his industry and sagacity is attributed in great part the origin of the immense wool-trade which has developed between the colony and the mother-country.
And what is now the wool wealth of Australasia? In 1820 there were not more than ten thousand sheep of 'a good sort' in New South Wales; and in the same year, wool from the colony was sold in London at an average of three s.h.i.+llings and sevenpence the pound. This led to the circulation of fabulous reports of the profits to be made out of sheep; and there was quite a run for some years on the squatting lots. In 1848 some Australians started sheep-running in New Zealand; and by 1860 the sheep in these islands had increased to 2,400,000. In 1865 the number there had grown to 5,700,000; in 1870, to 9,500,000; and in 1894, to 19,000,000.
In 1886 the pastoral wealth of the whole of the Australian colonies consisted of 84,222,272 sheep. At only ten s.h.i.+llings per head, this represents a capital of over forty-two millions sterling, without counting the value of the land. The number of sheep in 1894 was over 99,000,000.
But now as to the yield of the flocks. The value of the wool for 1884 was 20,532,429.
The total importations of wool into England in 1885-86 were 1,819,182 bales, of which no fewer than 1,139,842 bales, or nearly three-fourths of the whole, came from Australasia. The rest came from the Cape and Natal, India, the Mediterranean, Russia, other European countries, China, and the Falkland Islands. The imports in 1894, from all quarters, consisted of 705 million pounds, of a value of 25,000,000.
It would transcend the limits of our s.p.a.ce to attempt to sketch the history and growth of the woollen industry in the manufacture of cloths.
It is an industry, if not as old as the hills, at least very nearly as old as the fig-leaves of Eden; for we may a.s.sume as a certainty that the next garments worn by our forefathers were constructed in some way from the fleecy coats of these bleating followers. We exported woollen and worsted yarns of a value of over four million pounds sterling in 1894, and of woollen and worsted manufactures, a value of 14 millions sterling.
In the middle ages all the best wool was produced in England, and the woollen manufacture centred in Norfolk, although both the west of England and Ireland had also factories. There are in existence specimens of cloth made in these medieval days which show that the quality of the wool employed was not equal to that which we now use. The art of weaving is supposed to have been brought from the Netherlands; at any rate there were strong political alliances between the English sovereigns and the weavers of Bruges and of Ghent. In these old days, when Norwich, Aylsham, and Lynn had the lion's share of the woollen trade, the great mart for English and foreign cloths was at Stourbridge, near Cambridge, where a fair was held which lasted a month every year.
There were 2546 woollen and worsted mills in the United Kingdom in 1890.
The chief seats of the wool manufacture in England in the 14th century were Bristol, London, and Norwich. Now Wilts.h.i.+re and Gloucesters.h.i.+re are famous for broadcloths, while the towns of Leeds and Huddersfield in Yorks.h.i.+re are important centres. Galas.h.i.+els and Hawick are noted for their tweeds.
COTTON.
The Father of History, in writing about India--'the last inhabited country towards the East'--where every species of birds and quadrupeds, horses excepted, are 'much larger than in any other part of the world,'