DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.11636#0352
322 TRAVELS IN UPPER
mediately carried to the Nile, where it is washed
and beaten. It is afterwards spread out, in order
to dry.
When the skeins are pretty dry, they are wash-
ed anew in the whey which flows from cheeses,
in Arabic called mesch. This is a sort of dressing
which gives quality to the cloth ; and when the
Egyptians handle a cloth not very stout, they say
it has no mesch.
To bleach two hundred pounds of thread it
commonly requires one hundred pounds of natron,
and from sixty to eighty pounds of lime; observ-
ing, however, that the sullan-r&ivoii, that is to say,
that which is the purest, being more powerful than
the common, must be used in a smaller quantity.
Without this precaution, the thread or the cloth
would run the hazard of being burnt.
So expeditious a method of bleaching cloth and
thread, would merit being attempted in France. It
is said that it was formerly adopted at Rouen, but
that it had been laid aside because it burnt the
cloths*. It is possible that they did not make the
proper preparations, nor observe the same process
as the Egyptians, for it is very certain that neither
their threads nor cloths were burnt. The com-
* Voyage de la Boullaye le Gouz, Paris, 1657, page 383.
merce
mediately carried to the Nile, where it is washed
and beaten. It is afterwards spread out, in order
to dry.
When the skeins are pretty dry, they are wash-
ed anew in the whey which flows from cheeses,
in Arabic called mesch. This is a sort of dressing
which gives quality to the cloth ; and when the
Egyptians handle a cloth not very stout, they say
it has no mesch.
To bleach two hundred pounds of thread it
commonly requires one hundred pounds of natron,
and from sixty to eighty pounds of lime; observ-
ing, however, that the sullan-r&ivoii, that is to say,
that which is the purest, being more powerful than
the common, must be used in a smaller quantity.
Without this precaution, the thread or the cloth
would run the hazard of being burnt.
So expeditious a method of bleaching cloth and
thread, would merit being attempted in France. It
is said that it was formerly adopted at Rouen, but
that it had been laid aside because it burnt the
cloths*. It is possible that they did not make the
proper preparations, nor observe the same process
as the Egyptians, for it is very certain that neither
their threads nor cloths were burnt. The com-
* Voyage de la Boullaye le Gouz, Paris, 1657, page 383.
merce