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WINTER INDIA

miri men and boys, cross-legged in alcoves, embroidering gold turban ends or fine shawl borders. One Kashmiri in purple satin jacket and a yellow turban worked with gold wire, while a small boy in a sleeveless red jacket and a woman in a head-sheet of vivid pink looked on. Heaps of oranges and pale bananas, red Kashmiri apples, and green Kabul grapes made set color studies on every fruit-stand. The dried-sweetmeat shops were as rich in combinations of browns and tawny orange, and the curry-shops were as satisfying with their strands of red peppers and baskets of red, white, yellow, brown, and greenish meal. Candy-sellers crouched in the open with trays of sticky sweets, beseeching us to keep our shadows away. Having thus defiled a tray of gujack, we bought it and found many idlers willing to eat the defiled sesame brittle, made of sesame seeds, sorghum syrup, seedless raisins, almond meal, and crescents of thin cocoanut strips, the rich "fudge" rolled out in a thin pancake over a foot in diameter. Silk-shops, brass- and pottery-shops, gem-cutters' and shoemakers' dens, were all decorative and interesting. The tea-shops, with steaming samovars, were significant of the dreaded Russian advance and influence. The red beans of New England and pop-corn had a familiar look even in such strange environment.

After a revel in this living picturesqueness we went ruefully back to conventional sight-seeing and did the Jama Masjid, with its superb inlaid arches, and saw the relics of the Prophet. We saw Runjeet Singh's tomb, its carved doors and gay mirror