A Piece Of The Silk Road

The over four thousand mile Silk Road (Silk Route) wasn't just about early trade of silk, but so much more, such as the trade of other goods, like:

• satin
• other fine fabrics
• musk
• spices
• medicines
• jewels
• glassware
• non-native plants
• non-native animals

In doing so, it connected ancient China to various countries, among which were India, Egypt, the Middle East, Africa, and Europe. For it's time it gave people as much as the global view of the world we are now experiencing on the Internet in terms of a cultural exchange of knowledge and ideas. Those were both exciting and dangerous times, just like we find in our ever changing views of the world today.

The source of the four most important natural textiles used in the world today are now primarily synthetics and cotton blends, but there was in the past and always will be a love for a piece of silk. Real organic silk from the silk worm, or rather the cocoon spun from a certain caterpillar, the Bombyx mori became the one of the most motivating reasons for the silk road.

Although we still today call this the silkworm, it is not really a worm, but a moth. I've had my own adventures with the silk worm, as described in Madame Butterfly's Cocoon Pets, and it the wonder of how a piece of silk actually exists still is a fascinating story. The first four chapters of these splendid little creatures and their life is a simple tale:

• First there is an egg. The egg hatches, and out come a grub, or caterpillar, or larva, looking somewhat like a little worm.
• This eats and grows and bursts out of its skin, and eats and grows and bursts out of its skin several more times.
• The caterpillar spins a long slender thread, miles of it, and winds the thread around and around its body, until it is completely covered; and in this silken nest it goes to sleep.
• Inside the cocoon the caterpillar changes into a butterfly or into a moth, which breaks out of the cocoon to spend the last chapter of its life as a winged creature.

The organic silk which we still covet today is the slender thread unwound from the cocoon of the Bombyx mori, while the caterpillar is still asleep within the nest.

Of course it's no secret that the Chinese first discovered the use of silk. They learned that it could be woven into material, and they learned how to get it from the silkworm. They found that the silkworm could be kept alive in captivity; that it would thrive as a prisoner if it were kept clean and were fed on mulberry leaves.

So they kept the caterpillars, and when these turned into moths, they kept the eggs the moths laid. When the new generation of caterpillars spun cocoons of silk, the Chinese took a certain number of the cocoons and unwound the silk of which they were composed, and made the silk into cloth.

What the Chinese were doing with caterpillars nearly five thousand years ago, the people in many countries would come to do over time and even today and all for the same purpose, that people may have silk to wear or to use for the thousand and one purposes for which this beautiful fabric is so much sought.

It is wonderful to think that all the millions of silkworms that for many years produced the silk upon which the whole of Europe mainly depended came at some point from a single batch of eggs brought out of China by two monks.

They did so by way of deception and stealth, as the Chinese guarded their secret as closely as they could. They did not want people in other countries to know how to make silk. If other people wanted silk, they must buy it from the Chinese, not make if for themselves. They sold a good deal to Rome, for Rome in all her glory could not produce silk for herself.

This state of things lasted until five hundred and fifty years after the birth of Christ. Then, the wise emperor Justinian, who ruled in Constantinople, saw how important was the silk trade, and determined that he would create it in the roman Empire. Two Persian monks who had long lived in china told him that they had seen the whole process of rearing the silkworms and the manner of treating the silk. So Justinian sent them secretly to China to get some eggs of the silk moth. They walked all the way from Constantinople to China, and then they walked back again, bringing with them some of the precious eggs.

It would have cost them their lives had the purpose of their visit been known. they knew this and were very careful. They got a supply of eggs of the silk moth, hid them in a hallow bamboo, and then carried them to Constantinople and there presented them to the Roman emperor. The Emperor was delight.

The eggs were hatched and there appeared, for the first time in history, a number of captive silkworms in Europe.

From each female moth he got five hundred or more silkworms, and from these, in turn, another great increase. The monks had brought him, in a little bamboos nest of eggs, a rich gold mine.

The Emperor caused a silk factory to be set up in his palace. Only those whom he appointed were allowed to manufacture silk. However, of the course of time, the eggs of the silk moths were carried to other countries.

In Italy and France many towns became famous for their silk manufacturers. Frenchmen took the secret of manufacturing silk to England, where the important industry quickly grew up. Men tried hard to cultivate the silkworms in England and in Germany, but never succeeded sufficiently to supply the factories with cocoons.

Before the American colonies became independent, mulberry trees were imported and attempts were made to grow silkworms with little success. Although the mulberry grows well and the worms thrive, the process demands much labor and constant watchfulness. Cheap labor has always been too scarce and wages have between too high to permit the industry to become profitable in the United States.

Sometime in 1850 a terrible disease broke out among the silkworms of Italy and France. In spite of the disease there were always some healthy caterpillars producing silk, and the trade never came to a standstill, but the damage robbed France and Italy of hundreds of millions of dollars.

It was only then that Europe had to send again to the East for more eggs of the silk moth. For hundreds of years Europe had been stocked with its millions of silkworms from the descendants of those silkworms which came from of those silkworm which came from the eggs carried away in the little bamboo by the two monks at the command of Emperor Justinian.

Raising silkworms is not particularly difficult. The moths are encouraged to lay their eggs on sheets of paper. these eggs are very tiny -- it takes forty thousand to weigh an ounce -- and must be kept in a cool, dry place until the mulberry trees are in leaf.

Then the eggs are placed either in the sun or in an incubator, where they soon hatch. The tiny larvae begin to eat at once and grow rapidly.

Within two months they molt, or change their skin, four times and eat several thousand times their original weight of mulberry leaves.

The caterpillar is now about three inches long and eats vigorously for a few days more. Then, it prepares for its end. All the time that the silkworm has been growing up, it has been forming and filling two large vessels, or sacs, that run along the sides of its body. In these two sacs is stored a sticky fluid.

That sticky stuff in the body of the caterpillar is to become the marvelous silk which makes the insect so valuable.

Then it is about to spin, as we call it, the caterpillar ceases to eat.

If you were to watch this process you would see a tiny stream issue from its lower lip.

That is silk issuing from the spinnerets, or seripositors. the sticky fluid, if we force it from the body of a silkworm, becomes hard at once, but manipulated by the silkworm it is drawn out into a beautiful fine strand of silk.

Strands from two sacs are joined together by the silkworm to form one thread, and it is only by the aid of the microscope that we are able to discover that there are two in the thread. With this material the silkworm weaves its lovely house of silk.

The work usually takes three cays, but may take four, or even five. all the time that it is building, the silkworm works its head round and round in regular order, never wearying. All the time the silk never fails. Little by little the silkworm builds up its castle, weaving it so perfectly that at last the caterpillar is entirely enclosed in it.

The silkworm at the beginning of this task, weighs over 90 grains. When the labor is ended, the silkworm, with its cocoon, weighs only about 50 grains. There it is in a lovely glove of tightly woven silk, looking like some fairy pigeon's egg.

The cocoon may be either white or pale yellow. It is interesting that silkworms must have plenty of space. If they are at all cramped, two will spin together only one cocoon, and this will be less valuable.

If the cocoons are left undisturbed, there will come forth, in from fifteen days to three weeks, a moth from each. The average length of the moths is about a half an inch. The males are slightly smaller than the females.

The moths can be kept on a cloth. They eat very little, and sometimes even nothing at all. They mate as birds mate. The females lay five hundred or more eggs and then die. The males do not live long after them. Their whole lives as moths last but a few days. In that time they never try to fly away. the females cannot fly at all. The males ha e just enough power in their wings to steady themselves in descending, but they cannot possibly fly upward.