338 
THE ORIENTAL ANNUAL. 
extreme tip of his nose, and retained there, after the 
native fashion, by a string passed behind the ears, 
his Khoran spread carefully upon his crossed legs, 
his face towards Mekka, he reads, for his own bene- 
lit, in a sing-song voice, audible to all passengers — 
whom, by way of episode, he, from time to time, 
congratulates with a salaam aleikoom , or a scrap of 
the latest news. When a customer offers himself, 
he is not admitted within the shop, as in Europe, 
but the merchant calls for the required goods, one 
article only being produced at a time, and changed 
again and again until of the required kind or quality. 
These men are chiefly traders in brocades, muslins, 
bullion, cloth of gold, shawls, arms, and jewels. 
The petty dealers and pedlers have, as is meet, a 
more humble way of doing business ; for they have 
usually no shop, and all their wares are arranged 
upon the bare ground, or upon a carpet spread be- 
fore them. 
Some years since, the trade of Boorhanpoor was 
unrivalled in the Dekkan. The immense demand 
upon its market, occasioned by the quartering of the 
Maharhatta armies round about it, and the con- 
sumption in the courts of Sihndia, of Holkur, of the 
Rajas of Sathara and Guikawa, made princes of its 
former merchants, and drew thither speculators from 
all regions of the East. 
The chief article of manufacture is the Iculla- 
buttoo , or gold and silver thread, used in the weav- 
