Page:Letters from India Vol 1.djvu/189

 though I should be glad to say anything spiteful against this horrid country, yet it is indisputable that my health is very much better than it was in London.

It is very difficult to procure at any price the real fine old lndian muslin, but I have got one gown of it something like a bettermost cobweb, and an old creature with a long beard is working it all over with small sprigs at ten rupees for the whole gown. The two Dacca men are embroidering a gown in coloured silks, and I never saw such lovely work. I gave them ten rupees a month, which serves for wages and board-wages, and they sit on the floor in my passage and work, one on each side of a large frame; and when we go to Barrackpore they roll up their frame, put themselves into the boat, and come up and set to work again; and they sleep in the passage, or the hall, or out of doors if it does not rain. I see how extravagance and carelessness must grow on people who live long in India just in that sort of way. All these works, and the trinkets we get made by the native jewellers, cost a great deal of money in the actual materials, but the workmen themselves cost very little; there is no difficulty