industry is one of great benefit to the inhabitants, for
not only are large numbers of men and boys employed
on the actual work, but women and children prepare
and wind the wool. The trade is one that has to be
learnt early, and the entire training must be gone
through before a workman is considered competent.
The first process to be learned is the winding of the
wool, which is handed over in enormous hanks to each
foreman, and, squatting on the floor, were to be seen
innumerable small brown boys busily winding it off
from their toes, ever present and ready skein holders!
The first promotion places them behind the looms,
where they sit and run a line of the cotton into the
warp to strengthen it for sustaining the wool, and then,
with a large iron comb, they push it into place. When
this part of the work is learned, they are transferred
to the other side of the loom, where they begin by
learning to place and knot, in the curious fashion in
vogue, the wool for the plain stitches that edge the
border, and at the end of six months they are usually
expert enough to work at the difficult pattern. And
the pattern, how is that accomplished? Strange as it
may seem, the pattern is unknown to all the workers.
All that they are given are slips of papers on which
appear extraordinary hieroglyphics, the patois of the
Kashmiri carpet-makers written in a shorthand of their
own, indicating directions for the line next to be proceeded
with. “ 3 green, lift 4, 2 black, 5 blue, 12 green,
lift 6,” etc., drones out the head-boy at each loom, and
nimbi pi brown fingers knot in the wool, fork it straight,
and clip even with large iron scissors as the row is
completed.
In this laborious thorough manner the great fabrics
are completed, some as large as sixty by thirty feet;
every thread is strong, soft, enduring, and the prices
merely range according to the quality of wool from,
perhaps, sixteen rupees a square yard to ninety, one
hundred, and one hundred and sixty for the finest. I t
is a constrained, hard life for such young folk, and
they contrive some pleasant relaxations, catching an
unfavoured neighbour a sly whack with the fork, or
digging a too superior “ head-boy” with the weighty
scissors.
Group of Hindu a rtis ts
Beautiful old Persian and Kashmiri patterns are
imitated, and the colouring, save in rare instances where
Europeans have insisted on choosing home models
to be copied, is never at fault.
The people who make these perfect patterns, and
are the brains to these countless pairs of active hands,
work in small, dark rooms, -almost without accessories,