588 



CASHMERE. 



Produc- 

 tions. 



Cashmere, notice, in this view, is the rose of Cashmere, the sea- 

 ' s ^r*** son of the first appearance of which is hailed with so 

 much delight by the natives, and of which the essen- 

 tial oil or ottar is held in universal estimation. In all 

 directions in this province, there occur the European 

 plants, flowers, and fruit and other trees ; and in the 

 gardens there is abundance of melons, skirrets, beets, 

 radishes, with all the variety of our pot-herbs. The 

 pasture-grounds of Cashmere are plentifully stocked 

 with the useful domestic animals, as cows, sheep, and 

 goats. There is a kind of sheep here called Hundoo, 

 which is used to carry burthens. There are also ga- 

 zels and musks. Game abounds in the country, and 

 there is a plentiful and productive stock of bees. 

 Indeed the whole of this favoured district may be 

 said to resemble a garden, interspersed with towns 

 and villages, which rise amongst green meadows, beau- 

 tiful trees, and all the variety of other vegetable pro- 

 ductions ; watered by numerous streams and rivulets, 

 which, flowing in all directions from the surrounding 

 rising grounds, hasten to convey their tribute to the 

 Behut or Chelum, the parent of the soil ; intersected 

 by canals, which wind through it in every variety of 

 form ; still farther diversified by lakes, in some of 

 which are observed floating islands ; and cheered, en- 

 riched, and enlivened by all the varied aspects of ac- 

 tive and animated nature. Still one dreadful evil of 

 a physical kind is here experienced. This is the fre- 

 quent recurrence of earthquakes, to secure themselves 

 against the fatal effects of which, the inhabitants com- 

 monly build all their houses of wood, of which an 

 abundant supply is to be obtained from the neigh- 

 bouring mountains. 



The Cashmerians are considered to be the most in- 

 genious of all the nations of India. With as much 

 taste for poetry and capacity for science as the Per- 

 sians, they are more industrious and more laborious. 

 They fabricate the best writing paper of the East, 

 which was formerly an article of extensive traffic, as 

 were also its lacker-ware, cutlery, and sugars. Their 

 elegant works in wood, are in request in all the sur- 

 rounding districts of country, and they are deserved- 

 ly admired for their address and expertness in the arts 

 of varnishing, veneering, and gilding. But the most 

 noted and the most important of all the artificial pro- 

 ductions of Cashmere, consists in its shawls, which, 

 with good reason apparently, have attained a cele- 

 brity hitherto unrivalled. It has been alleged that 

 the wool of which one description of these shawls is 

 Oashmere. made, is not found in the country, but is brought 

 from Thibet. It has also been pretty commonly un- 

 derstood that those of another kind are made of goats' 

 hair. Both of these notions seem to be founded in 

 mistake. The breed of sheep, whence the wool in 

 question is obtained, though not peculiar to this 

 country, is at least common to it with Thibet and 

 Boutan, and the shawls which have been considered 

 to be formed from goats' hair, are the produce of the 

 wool of the camel. 



The same circumstances which constitute Cash- 

 mere one of the finest regions of the earth, contri- 

 bute also not a little to the beauty of its flocks and 

 the superiority of its wool ; its pure air and constant- 

 ly serene sky, brilliant nights, continual dews, innu- 

 merable springs which water the hills and the plains, 



Wool of 



and the union within itself from its particular aitua- Caslimece 

 tion, in respect to vegetable produce, of the advan- w T"""*' 

 tages of all climates. Particularly, the mountains 

 which surround this rich and fertile district yield a- 

 bundance of aromatic plants that afford excellent 

 pasture for sheep ; they are covered almost the whole 

 year with wild thyme and sweet marjoram. By a 

 due care on their own part, added to these advan- 

 tages, for which they are indebted to nature, the 

 Cashmerians obtain in favour of their manufactures 

 that to which chiefly they owe their excellence, the 

 finest wool in the world. The sheep from which Sheep, 

 this wool is procured, is one of the most beautiful 

 of its species: its mean length is from 36 to 40 

 inches, its height from 20 to 22, and its weight from 

 55 to 60 pounds. The most distinguishing charac- 

 ters of this race, are a small head and lively eyes ; 

 their front is not rough, and they have a long and 

 wrinkled dewlap. The lambs are brought forth with 

 crispy wool on the flanks, but they have only a few 

 flocks on the back and along the spine. Each sheep 

 produces at an average about three sers, of thirty 

 ounces, of clean wool. It is a valuable and essen- 

 tial quality of these sheep, essential at least in such 

 a district of country as that to which they are con- 

 fined, that they caq bear the extremes either of heat 

 or cold. Yet to secure them against the injurious 

 effects that might possibly ensue from their expo- 

 sure to the greater heats of the summer season, they 

 are, during the continuance of these, made to traverse 

 a lake or a river several times a day. In Cashmere, 

 moreover, as in Greece and in Spain, the sheep are 

 moved from place to place within the limits of the 

 province, (a range, narrow indeed as to extent, but 

 very considerable in respect to variety of climate),, 

 that throughout the whole course of the year they 

 may be kept nearly in an equal temperature. At 

 the same time, they are never, with a view to this 

 object, crowded into cots or confined places, which, 

 it is justly apprehended, would be in every respect 

 only injurious to them. By such management, at 

 once the health of the flock is preserved, and the 

 wool is whitened and becomes of a texture soft and 

 silky. Without any farther care, besides that of pre- 

 ferring always a lamb of the second birth for a breed- 

 ing ram, avoiding to cross the breed, providing a 

 little nourishment for the sustenance of the animals 

 at those seasons, when they are not suffered to range 

 abroad, or when little is to be found for them in the 

 fields, and meeting, with a few simple remedies, any 

 incipient or apprehended disease, the Cashmerians 

 obtain that extraordinarily fine white silky wool, 

 which generally, from the nape of the neck to the 

 flanks, is from 20 to 22 inches in length, and even 

 on the flanks and lower parts of the body, is not 

 less than five or six, and equally of that length, 

 which, in short, both for fineness and for whiteness, 

 surpasses every other wool, even the most celebraied 

 for those qualities throughout the known world. 



The general practice in Cashmere is to shear the 

 sheep only once in the year, the operation taking 

 place 15 or 20 days after the return of the great 

 heats, when, from the perspiration of the animals, the 

 wool may have become more soft and pliant. Du- 

 ring the period of the shearing, the sheep are washed 



