Chapter xxxviii refers to a scarlet thread, an indication or suggestion

that the art of dyeing was also known at this early period in the early Biblical history.

Herodotus records garments made from hemp by the Thracians, and to the present day hemp is largely cultivated in the vicinity of the lands occupied by the descendants of this ancient race.

Moschion, whose writings appeared before the Christian era, states that the “great ships of Syracuse which were built by command of Hiero II were supplied with hemp and ropes from the Rhone districts. Hemp was brought from Colchis to the ports of the Aegean Sea by the merchants who were connected commercially with the north and east coasts of the Euxine through their Milesian colonies.”

Pliny also records the use of hemp for ships, and states that it was in common use among the Romans in the first century for ropes and sails, as well as for other purposes.

The more or less uncertain knowledge of practically all the earlier attempts at the solution of fibre extraction renders it impossible for us to bridge the gap between the time when crude primitive methods were practised and that which ushered in the more perfect methods described by Pliny in the first century--methods which, in certain cases, have varied little since this early period, and which are practised with a high degree of success. We may, therefore, leave this interesting period to the researches of students in history, and enter upon the description and illustration of the various plants from which fibre is extracted, and the actual processes which such fibre has to undergo before it is ready for the market in one or other of the well-known types of cordage.