Goats Hair
Goats' Hair (Heb. goats sinmply; see above) was used by Moses in making the curtains of the tabernacle (Ex 25:4), and, from what we now know of it, seems to have been particularly suitable. The hair of the goats of Asia, Phrygia, and Cilicia, especially .of the Angora breed, which is at the present day manufactured into stuffs, is very bright and fine, and has to the ground; ins beauty it almost equals silk, and is never sheared, but combed off. The shepherds carefully and frequently wash these goats in rivers, and the women of the country spin the hair; it is then worked and dyed. The natives attribute the quality of the hair to the soil of the country. (See a treatise son the Pastoral Life and Manufactures of the Ancients, N.Y. 1845, chapter 4) "The Cashmere breed has long been celebrated as the source from which are obtained those elegant Indian shawls which fetch so high a price in Europe. It is carried on men's backs over the ridges of the Himalayas, across frightful precipices, along narrow ledges over sharp, snow-covered peaks climbed by wooden ladders, across rattling cane- bridges over foaming torrents, until it arrives, loaded with extortionate taxes, at Cashmere, where the shawls are woven. Thence they are sent by mountain roads similarly beset with dangers and difficulties, and subject at every step to extortionate tribute, into Europe, either through Turkey, or over the Caucasus through Russia." SEE TEN'T.
