Page:ER Scidmore--Winter India.djvu/327

Rh hammedan slippers dandled in gorgeous strings and bunches, and leather-workers bent over rainbow tasks! The wool-shops, where Bokhara camels' wool and Kashmir and Rampur pashmina cloths overflowed from open sacks and bales! And yarn-shops, hung over with skeins of every color! Dye-shops, where turban lengths hung dripping with every brilliant fluid! Copper and brass and damascened metal shops, and shops for the sale of coarse carpets and dhurries, of skin bottles and earthen bowls,—all were fascinating. The shops, however, were the dens of shawl-shops, where pale, fine-featured Kashmiris sat embroidering shawl borders with silks and gold thread. The little Kashmiri boys, with their great eyes and long lashes, were charming creatures, fine products of an old race and an old civilization, purest Aryans of all these people; but the bearded Sikhs despise the Kashmiri only a little less than they despise the Bengali. The gentle, esthetic Kashmiri is not a fighting man, and there are thousands of pure and mixed Kashmir weavers and embroiderers long resident in Amritsar who still quail before the giant Sikhs.

We found the jewelers' row, where women who were themselves walking jewel-shops sat bargaining; and we found the gem-cutters' dens, where jade blocks from Yarkand and farther Turkestan were sawed, cut, and polished. Jewel-boxes, knife-handles, knife-blades, ear-rings, bracelets, slabs, and medallions for Delhi jewelers to inlay with precious stones, were all being evolved from the rough lumps of green stone by means of the primitive bow-string