1862.] Notes of a trip from Simla to tlie Sjjiti Vatley. 505 



to mind the bars of a gridiron. Most of the men wear necklaces of 

 large amber beads or turquoise of very irregular shapes, but very fre- 

 quently an inch or more in diameter. The amber is mostly sulphur- 

 colored and it is by no means easy to purchase a fine necklace, as 

 they seem to be regarded as heir-looms, and are all brought from 

 " Maha-chin." Besides these large beads, the less affluent wear 

 smaller ones of glass, agate or coral, though usually with a few beads 

 of their favorite amber or turquoise intermixed. Some beads are a 

 very clever imitation of dark onyx of Chinese mamifacture, which is 

 not readily detected, save on close examination. They are the same 

 I believe as are met with occasionally in Hindustan, where they are 

 called " Solimains," and are greatly prized, though none here can 

 tell where they originally came from.* The women wear similar 



* I have subsequently been able to procure a good number of these antique agate 

 beads at Benares, and have little doubt that the whole of them are originally 

 derived from the mounds and ruins at Bamean and other spots in the Cabul 

 territory, where gems, beads, coins and other relics of Grseco-Bactriau manufac- 

 tures are found after the rains have ploughed up the soil. 



The beads are of all shapes and sizes, spherical, cylindrical, fusiform or bar- 

 rel shaped, and of various materials, dark agate with white bands, onyx, carne- 

 lian, jade, black schist with white bands, lapis lazuli, rock crystal, obsidian (?) 

 blue and white porcelain, and glass and enamel of various colours. Many other 

 sorts of stone as amethyst and bloodstone also occur, but I could not satisfy myself 

 that these were antique, though they possibly may be. The single obsidian bead 

 is cut as a polygon with numerous small faces, and I consider it as obsidian ra- 

 ther than a dark enamel, from its having been drilled, which glass or enamel beads 

 never are, and consequently exhibit a much larger and more irregular or gaping 

 perforation ; and as obsidian occurs in Kattiawar, it might have been procured. 



The most curious beads of all are, however, of agate or carnelian inlaid with 

 a cream-coloured enamel. Of these I have several patterns, cylindrical, spherical, 

 fusiform or flattened. One round bead is ornamented all over with elongate 

 spots formed by pitting the surface of the carnelian and filling the depression 

 with enamel. Another is ornamented with circles formed in the same way, while 

 the fusiform beads have two narrow circles at either extremity, from which 

 alternately five lines are carried half way down and connected round the middle 

 of the bead by a zig-zag line, like that uniting two layers of cells in a honey- 

 comb. Of this sort of bead I have a curious but rough imitation in enamel 

 which is probably antique, and the same pattern is also wrought on smaller 

 polygonal beads of dark agate. The cylinders are either carnelian or dark agate 

 with four or five cream-coloured beads carried round them. In all these the pat- 

 tern is engraved as a deep groove on the surface of the agate and then filled in, 

 flush with the surface, with enamel, and so nicely executed are some of these 

 beads that a good glass in well executed specimens fails to reveal the mode of 

 manufacture save in a fractured or weather-worn part. 



The better-shaped of these brown beads are largely used for studs and buttons, 

 after being carefully rounded and polished, which last process brings out the 

 white bands in beautiful contrast with the brown colour. This brown is some- 

 time so intense as to be even black and is merely superficial, being probably pro= 

 duced by some process similar to that now in vogue in Europe, where- a similar 

 result is produced by steeping the agate in oil, which sinks into the porous 

 bands of the atone and then boiling it in sulphuric acid which chars the oil and 



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