[Sidenote: _Weaving as the first industrial art_]
We know that weaving is the first industrial art practised by primitive peoples, from the fact that it is found among the savages of Central Africa (_Park_) and the islands of the sea. "Clavigero, in his history of Mexico, shows that on the conquest of that country, weaving was found to be practised by the natives." (_Ashenhurst_.)
The Egyptians are supposed to have been inventors of the loom. There were two kinds in use, one horizontal and the other perpendicular. Instead of a shuttle they used a stick with a hook at one end, which was used also as a batten. Herodotus says that it was the practice of the Egyptians to push the woof downwards, and this method is pictured in many paintings; but one representation found at Thebes shows a man pushing it upwards. The former method is, I believe, the one generally used by all nations, and it certainly seems the easier way. Martin's description of a Hindoo loom in his "Circle of the Mechanical Arts" is interesting: "The loom consists merely of two bamboo rollers, one for the warp and the other for the web, and a pair of gears. The shuttle performs the double office of shuttle and batten, and for this purpose is made like a huge netting needle, and of a length somewhat exceeding the breadth of the cloth. This apparatus the weaver carries to a tree, under which he digs a hole large enough to contain his legs and the lower part of the gear. He then stretches his warp by fastening his bamboo rollers, at a due distance from each other on the turf, by wooden pins. The balance of the gear he fastens to some convenient branch of the tree over his head. Two loops underneath the gear, in which he inserts his great toes, serve instead of treadles, and his long shuttle, which also performs the office of batten, draws the weft through the warp, and afterwards strikes it up close to the web."
[Sidenote: _Crude implements used by primitive peoples_]
[Sidenote: _Patience and dexterity necessary_]
Ashenhurst says: "It is very evident that the implements used, not only by the early Egyptians, but by other contemporaneous nations, and even by the Hindoos at the present time, were of the rudest possible character, and nothing but the most exemplary patience, dexterity, and great delicacy of hand, acquired by long traditionary habit, can account for the extraordinary beauty and fineness of their textile productions." This exemplary patience, dexterity, and great delicacy of hand is exactly what we claim that weaving develops in our children to-day.