1841.] Roree in Khypoor. 397 



brick for 300 Rs., and a small one for 50 or 100 Rs ; most of the bouses 

 in Roree are calcined brick. To prevent insects penetrating the floors 

 of warehouses, which are intended to receive grain and goods, they are 

 sometimes paved with blocks of stone which may be procured in any 

 quantity in the neighbourhood ; the stones are covered with clay, and 

 plastered with cowdung, and a thick coat of coarse salt strewed over it. 



Houses above one story, belong to, and are occupied by one family, and 

 when the children marry, they remove to another dwelling ; all houses 

 of this description, were built by wealthy merchants and bankers, before 

 the reign of the Talpooras, and through their oppression many have 

 been deserted by the proprietors Families occupy the lower floors in 

 the cold months, and remove above in summer ; they cook and light 

 fires, above and below, and there are no chimnies for the smoke to escape. 

 The great height of the houses, and narrow streets and lanes, exclude the 

 sun's rays, and the heat in the lower stories is quite insupportable to 

 an European in summer. A single narrow door gives admittance to a 

 gloomy and dirty parlour, which is not furnished with windows nor any 

 aperture for light and air ; to get at the door you mount an earthen stair 

 with a narrow terrace at top. Poor people rarely use bedsteads,* and 

 have neither pillows nor sheets ; they spread their mats at night on 

 the house tops, or terrace in front of their doors, and cover themselves 

 with a blue cotton cloth, which serves them for a garment in the day 

 time. Others lock up their goods in a back chamber, and sleep in their 

 shops, which are open towards the street. 



The principal thoroughfare leading up from the Indus is paved with 

 bricks laid edge ways, and some of the lanes and passages in the town, 

 are as narrow and dirty as the closes in the old city of Edinburgh. The 

 bazars are covered in with mats like those of Arabia and Egypt, to 

 keep off the sun's rays, but so much neglected thtt they are a public 

 nuisance, rather than a comfort, and a horseman cannot ride under them 

 without coming in contact with sticks and cotton straw, which cover 

 him with dust. The interior of houses, is extremely dirty ; dunghills 

 fill the open spaces and suburbs of the town, and it presents altogether 

 a scene of great squalidness and filth: here are neither swine, vultures, 

 nor storks to devour the offal as in Indian villages, but loathsome, mangy, 

 and half-starved dogs are numerous, and almost the only scavengers. 



* A common bedstead, laced with a string of moonj grass, costs eight or ten annaa 

 (12 or 16 pence) „ 



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