Page:The history of silk, cotton, linen, wool, and other fibrous substances 2.djvu/382

 fingers dry by the use of a chalky powder. (See Part First, Chapter I, pp. 17 and 18.)

The yarn, having been reeled and warped in the simplest possible manner, is given to the weaver whose loom is as rude a piece of apparatus as can be imagined. It consists merely of two bamboo rollers, one for the warp and the other for the web, and a pair of headles. The shuttle performs the double office of shuttle and lay, and for this purpose is made like a large netting needle, and of a length rather more than the breadth of the web. This apparatus the weaver carries to a tree, under which he digs a hole (which may be called the treadle-hole) large enough to contain his legs and the lower tackle. He then stretches his warp by fastening his bamboo rollers at a proper distance from each other by means of wooden pins. The headle-jacks he fastens to some convenient branch of the tree over his head (See Plate V.): two loops underneath, ''in which he inserts his great toes'', serve instead of treadles; and his long shuttle, which also performs the office of lay, draws the weft through the warp, and afterwards strikes it home to the fell. "There is not so much as an expedient for rolling up the warp: it is stretched out to the full length of the web, which makes the house of the weaver insufficient to contain him. He is therefore obliged to work continually in the open air; and every return of inclement weather interrupts him ."

Forbes describes the weavers in Guzerat, near Baroche, as fixing their looms at sun-rise under the shade of tamarind and mango trees. In some parts of India, however, as on the banks of the Ganges, the weavers work under the cover of their sheds, fixing the geer of their looms to a bamboo in the roof (See Plate V.). They size their warps with a starch made