Lehal Library

HISTORY OF THE SIKHS 2 Silks, in- ?il°^„^"v cotton of Multan chap, i the dust storms of Multan are perhaps more oppressive than the cold and the drifting snows of Tibet; but the favourable position of the city, and the several overflowing streams in its neighbourhood, give an importance, the one to its manufactures of silks and carpets, and the other ta the wheat, the indigo, and the cotton of its fields.^ The southern slopes of the Himalayas are and the main branch of the Indus. About lOG.OOO rupees, or £10,000 worth may be carried down the valley of the Sutlej to Ludhiana and finest quality, in the steppes between the Shayuk (Journal Asiatic Society of Bengal, 1844, p. 210.) The importation into Kashmir alone is estimated by Moorcroft (Travels, ii. 165) at about £75,000, and thus the Sutlej trade may represent less than a tenth of the whole. Moorcroft speaks highly of the cultivation of wheat and barley in Tibet, and he once saw a field of the latter grain in that country such as he had never before beheld, and which, he says, an English farmer would have ridden many miles to have looked at. (Travels, i. 269, 280.) The gravel of the northern steppes of Tibet yields gold in grains, but the value of the crude borax of the lakes surpasses, as an article of trade, that of the precious metal. In Yarkand an intoxicating drug named churrus, much used in India, is grown of a superior quality, and while opium could be taken across the Himalayas, the Hindus and Chinese carried on a brisk traffic of exchange in the two deleterious comDelhi. modities. The trade in tea through Tibet to Kashmir and Kabul is of local importance. The blocks weigh about eight pounds, and sell for 12s. and 16s. up to 36s. and 48s. each, according to the quality. (Cf. Moorcroft, Travels, i. 350, 351.) 1 The wheat of Multan is beardless, and its grain is long and heavy. It is exported in large quantities to Rajputana, and also, since the British occupation, to Sind to an increased extent. The value of the carpets manufactured in Multan does not perhaps exceed 50,000 rupees annually. The silk manufacture m.ay be worth five times that sum, or, including that of Bahawalpur, 400,000 rupees in all; but the demand for such fabrics has markedly declined since the expulsion of a native dynasty from Sind. The raw silk of Bokhara is used in preference to that of Bengal, as being stronger and more glossy. English piece-goods, or (more largely) cotton twists to be woven into cloth, have been introduced everywhere in India; but those well-to-do in the world can alone buy foreign articles, and thus while about eighteen, tons of cotton twist are used by the weavers of Bahawalpur, about 300 tons of (cleaned) cotton are grown in the district, and wrought up by the villagers or exported to Rajputana. The Lower Punjab and Bahawalpur yield respectively about 750 and 150 tons of indigo. It is worth on the spot from 9d. to Is. 6d. the pound. The principal market is Khorasan; but the trade has declined of late, perhaps owing to the quantities which may be introduced into that country by way of the Persian Gulf from India. The fondness of the Sikhs, and of the poorer Muhammadans of the Indus, for blue clothing, will always maintain a fair trade in indigo. [It seems hardly necessary to state that the prosperity of the Western Punjab to-day