Madras (cloth) handwoven (evidenced by the small flaws in the fabric). Cotton madras is woven from a fragile, short-staple cotton fiber that can't be combed, only carded, resulting in bumps known as slubs which are thick spots in the yarn that give madras its unique texture. The cotton is hand-dyed after being spun into yarn, woven and finished in some 200 small villages in the Madras area. Madras fabric is generally regarded as belonging to the peasant class in its native India. Dutch traders arrived in India in the early 1600s to trade in the local calico cloth, followed by the British.
East European Plain ranges. Together with the North European Plain covering much of north-eastern Poland, the Baltics (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania), north-eastern Romania, and Moldova it constitutes the European Plain, the mountain-free part of the European landscape. The East European Plain covers all or most of the Baltic states, Belarus, Ukraine, Moldova, Romania, and the European portion of Russia. The plain spans approximately and averages about in elevation. The highest point of the plain, located in the Valdai Hills, is . The following major landform features are within the East European Plain (listed generally from north to south). East European Plain The East