rug" of Western auction-rooms costing eleven and twelve rupees a square yard in Amritsar; while a copy of a precious old wine-red Bokhara rug they were then weaving of fine pashmina or shawl wool was worth fifty rupees a square yard.
Each loom was a genre picture and a color study, with the spectacled Kashmiri in sober turban and jacket on one side, and on the other the row of long-lashed boys in brilliant garments, elbowing and shoving one another and tittering together, quite as all children behave in the presence of school visitors. No finished carpets could be seen or bought, since the looms were working overtime, a year behind their orders. New York buyers order largely each year, and large consignments go to London and Paris. There were shawls for sale, bales and bales of them, and stitched in silk threads at the end of each chudda was the number of warp-threads, by which their fineness and value are determined. They are kept in press between boards, and when one bought the silky fabric it was sewed in Kashmir wax-cloth and sealed in a clumsy tin box.
So very enchanting did we find these bazaars that we lingered another day and yet another, to feast on their picturesque setting and incidents each warm, Indian-summery afternoon. Then we hastened to the guard-house terrace overlooking the tank and the Golden Temple, and watched that building of beauty, whose reflection seemed to float upon the splendid sunset sky.
We hurried back to the bazaars again, to see the narrow, irregular lanes illuminated with every kind
