Page:The lives of celebrated travellers (Volume 2).djvu/218

 with its straight taper stem, silver bark, and pale-green leaf resembling an expanded hand, is, when in full foliage, a splendid and beautiful tree, and affords a grateful and refreshing shade. But the chief glory of Kashmere is its rose, of all the vegetable world the most exquisite production, unrivalled for its brilliancy and delicacy of odour, and yielding an essential oil, or attar, in comparison with which all other perfumes are as dross. The season when the rose first opens into blossom is celebrated as a festival by the inhabitants of the valley, who, repairing in crowds to the surrounding gardens, give loose to their passions, and riot in every species of licentious rejoicing.

But the wealth and fame of Kashmere have been chiefly derived from the manufacture of shawls, unrivalled for their fineness and beauty. The wool, or rather down, from which they are fabricated is not the growth of the country, but brought from districts of the high table-land of Tibet, a month's journey to the north-east, where alone the shawl-goat will properly thrive. Various attempts have been made by the emperors of Hindostan and the kings of Persia to introduce this species of goat into their dominions; but the wool has always been found to be of an inferior quality. The French have lately imitated the examples of the Mogul and Persian sovereigns, and they may no doubt succeed in procuring a coarse kind of wool from which very useful shawls may be manufactured; but it may without much rashness be predicted, that in the attempt to rival the shawls of Kashmere they will inevitably fail, since no part of France is sufficiently analogous to the lofty plains of Tibet to afford the shawl-goat an exactly similar position with respect to climate, water, and food. Of all imitations that of the Persians, from the wool of Kerman, is said to approach most nearly to the shawl of Kashmere.

The wool, when imported, is of a dark-gray col