From India manufactured cotton seems to have reached Persia in very early times, for the word “Karpas” occurs in the book of Esther (chap. i. v. 6), in the description of the decorations of the palace of Shushan during the right royal festivities given there by King Ahasuerus, B.C. 519. In the verse referred to we are told that there were “white, green, and blue hangings.” The word corresponding with “green” in the Hebrew is “_Karpas_,” in the Septuagint and Vulgate, _carbasinus_, and should be rendered “cotton-cloth”; so that the hangings of the palace of Ahasuerus were of white and blue striped cotton, such as may be seen throughout India at the present day. Bishop Heber describes the Hall of Audience of the Emperor of Delhi, as having these striped curtains hanging in festoons about it. Mattrasses, also, of this striped material, stuffed and padded with coarse cotton, are still used in India as a substitute for doors and window-shutters, to keep out the heat, and are known as “purdahs.” Aristobulus reported that Susiana had when he was there “an atmosphere so glowing and scorching that lizards and serpents could not cross the streets of the city at noon quickly enough to prevent their being burned to death mid-way by the heat”; that “barley spread out in the sun was roasted, as in an oven, and hopped about” (like parched peas); and that “the inhabitants laid earth to the depth of three and a half feet on the roofs of their houses to exclude the suffocating heat,” so that it is not improbable that these blue and white striped “purdahs” were used in the palace of Shushan in the time of Ahasuerus. Strabo frequently mentions this palace of Shushan, or Susa, which was in the province of Susis, or Susiana, at the head of the Persian Gulf. He tells us that when Alexander the Great became master of Persia he transferred to this residence of the Persian Monarchs everything that was precious in the land, although the palace was already almost filled with treasures and costly materials. Strabo has further been quoted as mentioning that cotton grew in Susiana and was there manufactured into cloths, but although I have searched his chapters many times I can find no such statement. It is most probable, however, that before his time cotton did grow and was manufactured in Susiana, and that it was first introduced by the Macedonians. They certainly brought into culture there before the time of Strabo another valuable plant: for we have the distinct statement of the latter that “the vine did not grow in Susiana before the Macedonians planted it both there and at Babylon.”