CHAPTER XXVII. 



Another purgunna under my management, called Zinore, con- 

 tained a tolerable town and fifty villages. Zinore, the capital of 

 the district, was fifteen miles south from Dhuboy, and forty to the 

 eastward of Baroche. Neither the public or private buildings were 

 of much importance; but it was delightfully situated on the steep 

 banks of the Nerbudda; with a noble flight of a hundred stone steps 

 from the houses to the water-side, which would have added to the 

 grandeur of a much larger city. The Hindoo temples, brahminical 

 groves, and afew superior houses, indicate its having been once a place 

 of consequence. When I took possession of it for the Company, it 

 contained about ten thousand inhabitants ; generally weavers of 

 coarse cotton cloth, for the Persian and Arabian markets, with 

 some finer baftas and muslins for home consumption. Very few of 

 these cottons are dyed or painted at Dhuboy or Zinore; the art 

 has attained a much greater perfection at Ahmedabad and Surat. 



Cotton grows abundantly in most parts of the Zinore pur- 

 gunna ; the cultivation, gathering, cleaning, spinning, and weav- 

 ing this valuable production, employs the inhabitants of all ages. 

 Throughout the greater part of Guzerat we may apply Orme's 

 remarks on the manufactures of Coromandel, that a people born 



