- our, and is bleached in Kashmere by means of a certain
preparation of rice-flour. The whitest down, which is said to be brought from Rodank, is reckoned the best, and sells in the valley from ten to twenty rupees the turruk, about twelve pounds. No exact estimate of the number of shawls manufactured in the year can be made. There are said to be about sixteen thousand looms, each occupying three men, employed; and supposing, with a contemporary author, that five shawls on an average are made annually to each loom, the total number would amount to eighty thousand. The shop of the weavers consists of a kind of framework, at which the workmen sit on a wooden bench. Two persons are employed on the plainest shawls, and the number is sometimes doubled. The shuttle made use of is long, narrow, and heavy. When the pattern of the shawl is variegated, the flowers of figures are worked with wooden needles, there being a separate one for every different-coloured thread; and in such cases the operation is exceedingly slow.
"The oostand, or head-workman," says Hamilton, "superintends, while his journeymen are employed near him, under his directions. If they have any new pattern in hand, or one with which they are not familiar, he describes to them the figure, colour, and threads that are to be used, while he keeps before him the pattern on which they happen to be employed drawn on paper. During the operation the rough side of the shawl is uppermost on the frame, notwithstanding which the head-workman never mistakes the regularity of the most finished patterns. A shop may be occupied with one shawl above a year, provided it be a remarkably fine one, while other shops make six or eight in the course of that time. Of the best and most noted sorts not so much as a quarter of an inch is completed in one day by three persons, which is the usual number employed. Shawls containing much work are made in separate
