Page:ER Scidmore--Winter India.djvu/386

364 The streets of Alunedabad are dazzling and kaleidoscopic to one beginning his India at Bombay; but Ahmedabad, once "the handsomest town in Hindustan, perhaps in all the world," is a dull second after Jeypore. There were new models in turbans to be seen, and the picturesque pigeon-cotes erected by humane Jains are other novelties peculiar to this one city; for the Jains observe the strictest Buddhist tenets against destroying life, provide refuges and hospitals for animals, strain all the water they use, and step aside to spare the lowliest insect.

The vegetable, brass, and pottery bazaars, strung down the middle of a wide street, were centers of life and uproar; but the local guide bore us off to the workshop of a carpet-weaver,—poor show after Amritsar, Lahore, and Agra's factories,—and to the gate of the chief wood-carver who executes American orders for interior decorations. There was holiday or bankruptcy on for that day, but much searching and pounding on mute doors at last produced a lank Moslem with a key, who opened a great room containing a table, a book of designs, and four carved chairs, tagged with price-marks five times those of the Lahore Art School. We searched the brass bazaars and all the brass-shops for the pierced screens that a winter-touring M. P. lauds as a local specialty. In clouds of warm dust we drove here and there, hunting the famous kincob-shops, walking through archways to alleys and ill-smelling courts and cul-de-sacs, where small dealers had bundles of creased samples of tawdry, wall-papery brocades. Others