merchants of Cambay their keenest rivals, and their ships their richest prizes. It was the piracies of the Portuguese which gave the first shock to the prosperity of Ahmedabad In the eighteenth century its trade was still further drawn away from it by the English factory at Surat : and from that date this once magnificent emporium of the commerce of Western Asia, gradually declined to its present position of serene and opulent isolatioa The chief excellence of its silk manufacture lies in the brilliant colors of its plain silks, and the purity and strength of its brocades. China is the chief source of supply for the raw silk, but some comes from Bengal, some from Buss ora, and some from Bokhara. At Ahmedabad it is reeled, sorted, spun, warped, dyed, dressed, woven, and brocaded. To weave the brocades a more complicated arrangement of the loom is necessary than for ordinary silk weav- ing. A kind of inverted heddles called the naksh [ <£ picture J Le. design] is hung above the warp immediately behind the heddles, the other ends of the cords being fastened to a horizontal band running below the warp, like the cords of a heddle the naksh strings where they cross the warp have loops through which certain of the warp threads are passed. But instead ot getting an up-and-down motion from treddles pressed by the weavers foot, the naksh is worked, from above, by a child seated on a bench over its father's head. The little fellow holds a bar of wood, and by giving it a twist, draws up the cords attached to the threads of the warp, which, according to the nakshy or pattern, are at any time to appear in the surface of the web. The weaver, at the head of the loom, adds variety to his design by working silks of divers colors into the woof, along with threads of silver and gold : and thus the vision grows in the sight of the young child seated aloft.
Considerable quantities of silk goods are manufactured at Surat Mashru and efaieka, of mixed cotton and silk, formerly much used, are now going out of fashion ; but the demand for a smooth polished silk cloth known as gaji y used for choiis [bodices], even
