KASHMIR VALLEYS 155 



great beauty less valuable. It is of this stuff that the 

 far-famed Kashmir shawls are made, the wool itself 

 being the " underwear " kindly provided by nature for 

 the goats that live in the colder regions that surround 

 the Happy Valley. There were puttoos, too, of every 

 shade and thickness for a few annas the yard, beauti- 

 fully warm and soft, and "all enduring"; these are 

 the " homespuns " of the country, spun by the natives 

 during the long winter hours from the wool of the 

 sheep. 



The kopra merchant dismissed, there came by a 

 very smart boat, in it a slim, handsome boy in long blue 

 coat, sinewy, graceful, the son of one of the principal 

 silver and copper merchants. Boarding my doonga he 

 proceeded to undo bundle after bundle of beautiful 

 specimens of finest workmanship not deeply stamped 

 with strange, uncouth figures, and in rough, uncertain 

 chiselling, like nearly all the down-country metal work I 

 had seen, but covered with delicate reliefs surely and 

 accurately carried out, " Come and have tea at my 

 shop, and see some of my workers," pressed the 

 merchant, and I acceded, knowing that however tempt- 

 ing I might find the goods shown, I could fall back on 

 the safe position of "requiring time to consider," a 

 condition that has saved from many a threatened 

 financial difficulty. 



Soon after the silver wares had been repacked and 

 removed, a carpet merchant came with his boat to take 

 me by arrangement to see his factory, and, paddled 

 swiftly by eight lusty Kashmiris, we soon sped down 

 the river to the sheds where hundreds of workers were 

 sitting in rows, each busily employed on the loom in 

 front of him. The wool used is grown locally, and the 



