try. There is no superfluity, and no waste; and on the whole it is a most favorable specimen of native ingenuity and skill.

Indigo from Masulipatam, the produce of Bengal, finds its way to this place, and is sold for the same price as the Indigo manufactured here.

The carpet manufacture for which Warungal or rather the villages, Muswarrah, &c., in its close vicinity are celebrated, does not appear to be an indigenous art.

A distinct tradition exists of its introduction, and also the method of preparing and drying the materials that compose it, being due to the Mahometans, facts countenanced, if not substantiated, by the present weavers and dyers being uniformly of that religious persuasion.

The carpet loom is nothing more than the common native loom placed vertically instead of horizontally. The waft is of thick strong cotton twist, being arranged by no wafting mill, but by one of the workmen going round and round two stakes fixed in the ground and dropping the thread at each, as he passes; in the loom it is kept on the stretch by two strong billets of wood, the threads being approached by separate loops of cotton fixed to a bamboo, which is elevated or depressed at the will of the weaver. The worsted is held in the left hand, and a crescent shaped knife in the right, the fingers of both being left free; the inner thread of the waft is then seized, the worsted wound round the outer, crossed on itself, and the extremity drawn out, by which it is made to descend in the form of an open figure of eight to be snipped by the curved knife. It is superfluous to say that this is the work of an instant; when the pattern is new or difficult, the order and position of the worsted threads is changed by a coryphoeus in a kind of rhyme. On a row being completed, the warp, in the shape of a cotton thread dyed dark brown by the bark of the Swietenia Febrifuga, is forced down by means of an iron toothed comb, in form something like an adze ; the whole is completed by cutting the worsted to its proper length by a large scissors held steadily against the waft. It would rejoice a Manchester or Glasgow manufacturer to learn that infant labour is employed and preferred in Warungal carpet weaving, it being averred that their more limber finger joints are best fitted for the finer parts of the work, but cupidity all over the world is ingenious in finding excuses, and is ever ready to confound the expedient with the right. Dried springs of Toolsee (ocymum sanctum) and bunches of Lepidigathis Indica are attached to the loom frames; the workmen say that they make their labour go on more cleverly. Twelve different worsteds are employed.

The blue is produced from Indigo, the yellow, the sulphur yellow, from boiling the sulphur yellow in water impregnated with carbonate of soda, in which a little turmeric has been mixed, the deepest yellow is produced by dipping the same in potash ley. The reds are all produced by lac dye dissolved by tamarind juice, with sulphate of alumina and potash as a mordant. The depth of colour depends in 3 cases upon the original black, brown, or white colour of the wool; in the fourth on the length of time the last description of wool was allowed to remain in the dye. The greens are produced by immersion in Indigo, and then in polas or turmeric, their degrees also depend on the original colour of the wool. Bengal Indigo is always preferred to the home-manufactured by the worsted dyers, cotton carpeting is also prepared in the same way as the woollen.

The carpet weavers are described as given up to indolence and dissipation, to both of which they appeared on a late occasion most anxious to minister by endeavouring to establish a monopoly. There are at present two hundred looms working; at the village of Hoosun-purti, five miles from this, a good many looms are employed in weaving tusser or jungle silk. As this letter is already too long 1 shall defer till another occasion the description of this manufacture, and the rearing of the insects producing the raw material. I cannot conclude this without mentioning an import to this place, viz. English cotton yarn, of an orange colour, which comes from Masulipatam to be used by the cotton weavers in the borders of saries, punchees, &c.; the reason they assign for its employment is the quick fading of their native yellows; in all probability the English thread is dyed with fustic wood (Morus Tinctoria) the most lasting of yellow dyes. Be this as it may, its use bodes ought but good to the Indian manufac

turer.

Roree in Khyrpoor; its Population and Manufactures.-By CAPTAIN G.E. WESTMACOTT, 37th Regiment, Bengal N. I.

Roree or more correctly Lohuree, the ancient Lohurkot, is a town of considerable antiquity, and said to have been founded with Bukur, about the middle of the 7th century of the Hejira. It is built on a steep limestone ridge that sweeps in a crescent form along the east bank of the Indus. The strata of the rock is horizontal, and exhibits marks everywhere of the the action of the river, which must have risen formerly at least fifty feet above its present level in the season of floods, and washed the foundation of the houses. In the sandy bays, creeks, and hollows aban

doned by the stream, date and peepul trees grow luxuriantly, and rocks worn by the water, and shattered and broken into gigantic masses, were submerged at no very remote period. Along the base of the hills, on both banks of the river, the land bears the appearance of having been under water. The remains of a stone and brick wall, or quarry, built evidently to oppose the encroachments of the river, runs along the edge of the precipitous ridge which supports the town, and under it is an extensive cavern. Clay buttresses shore up the houses, which rise to four and five stories, and being composed of frail materials and badly built, threaten momentarily to topple over into the great road leading to the watering place, which is usually thronged with people.

The inhabitants affirm that the periodical rains have failed the last twenty years, and that the river rises less annually. An old Bunneah pointed to a spot, which he recollects to have seen covered by the river, and is now removed at least six feet above its level in the floods. To this cause partly, the people attribute the decline of the prosperity of Sind, and the extortions of the Talpoor Beloochees and the large expense incurred in digging canals and cuts for irrigation, swallow up the entire produce of their industry.

The Bunneah remembers upwards of fifty houses in Roree, being washed down about twenty years since by rain, and I can easily fancy the havoc a storm would make among the frail and ruined tenements in the town. The Indus rose, within his recollection, ten or twelve feet higher than it does now; for the last four years scarcely any rain has fallen, and grain has become progressively dearer, but there was a plentiful supply in 1839, compared with the quantity that fell in the preceding

seasons.

The lime ridge behind Roree is without a blade of vegetation, it swells into peaks and eminences, and stretches several miles inland, and along the river, to the south. Some of the hills are isolated,-and intersected by little valleys, and some are capped by tombs, shrines, and other buildings in ruins. These parched and arid hills are in powerful contrast with the deep verdure of date groves and bajree fields that are scattered in rich luxuriance over the low grounds towards the capital of the principality. The ledgah of Roree is about five hundred feet above the river, and few spots in the Eastern world surpass the view from it in beauty, and present a greater variety of objects. In front of the spectator are two picturesque little islands; the one covered with date palms, the other with tombs and mausolea, shooting up into innumerable pointed spires of glazed porcelain. The fort of Bukur, beyond it, embraces a

vast oval rock in the midst of the Indus, and exhibits on this face twentythree bastions of different forms resting on the edge of the stream; and date and peepul trees spring from the naked rock, and fix their roots in the foundation of the embattled curtain. On an elevated citadel in the middle of Bukur, floats the small blood-red flag of the Meer of Khyrpoor, emblazoned with the national emblem of a rampant tiger, and near it on a loftier staff, the more gorgeous standard of Britain, fourfold the size of the banner of the Meer; above and below the fort, are small wooded islands, inhabited by holy beggars, who are fed and attended by votaries from both sides of the water. The eye delights to rest on fertile groves of lofty date trees, mixed with vineyards and mango trees, and the Indus is seen meandering, far away in the distance, in snaky folds, through a perfectly flat and verdant country. The heights of Sukhur are a prominent feature in the landscape, and every hill crowned with a tent, a tomb, or a ruin. A battery of seven guns is in the midst of the British camp, and to the west of it the decayed mosque, the sainted shrine and minaret of Meer Masoom. The living objects in the foreground of the picture com. municated to it, at the time of my visit, additional interest and animation; an encampment of several hundred camels occupied a small valley leading to the river, and their drivers had tents of black goat and camels hair raised on sticks. Belooch horsemen, with flowing beards, each in his national cap of coloured cotton and accoutred with sword, shield, and matchlocks, rode slowly among the hills, and asses heavily laden with grass and wood for the citizens, wound up the steep rocky ascent into the town. The monotonous song of the washerman filled the air as he beat garments of many colours upon planks, and troops of Hindoo and Moosulman women bathed at the different ghats, each of the former, on her way home, carried a vessel of river water to lave, with pious reverence the roots of a peepul tree, and the emblem of Muhadeva which stood beneath it.

Most of the houses in Roree rise to three and four floors, and some have five, and standing on elevated ground they assume an appearance of great vastness to the eye. They have no ventilators or towers on the roofs, to catch the wind like the houses in Lower Sind and Arabia ; but the walls of the upper chambers are pierced with small windows without regard to symmetry. They are not glazed, but some of them in the harems of the principal residents, are filled with fine gratings of wood or mortar; some are open, and others furnished like the doors with folding shutters, which close badly, and are secured on the outside with a hasp and padlock; they are not painted any more than

the doors. The roofs are surrounded by a light rail or ballustrade, and have spouts to carry off water. The upper story has sometimes a wooden balcony, supported on frail posts, and the houses of the rich are contained in a walled court, along with buildings and sheds for servants. The rooms have pannelled ceilings tastefully carved, as are the windowframes and door posts. It forms the only ornament, and there is scarcely any furniture; coarse woollen carpets, and mats, supply the place of tables and chairs; some houses are constructed of burnt brick plastered with clay; when sun-dried bricks are used, they are not laid horizontally, but in a sloping or diagonal direction, (v. Fig. 1,) and the upper walls, which are extremely thin, are any kind of timber placed without regard to regularity, with tamarisk twigs between them, and plastered with clay, and chopped straw. Lime abounds every where ; but it is not the custom in Roree nor other parts of Sind to white-wash the outer and inner walls of houses, and they have a dingy uncomfortable appearance. The upright posts are chiefly tamarisk, fixed into horizontal beams of the same, and set in a stone foundation to preserve them from the depredations of white ants. Roofs are flat, and built of slight timbers, covered with reeds, and when reeds are not procurable, mats are substituted. The frame work is acacia, date, a whitish coloured wood called Bank or Buhan, and any other kind of timber; the acacia is scarce at Roree and Sukhur, and the date never used for door posts and pillars. The people put on the rafters a layer of *teer, then tchupree, and thirdly a kind of reed called Gondnee (Typha), upon which they spread a coat of fat yellowish clay (peela muttee) mixed with chopped straw and the sweepings of houses. Those who can afford it mix wheat chaff with the clay, and when it is dry lay over it a compost of cowdung and clay, to fill up crevices. Dry cowdung is sometimes put on the reeds, and covered with chopped straw and clay; a roof thus formed is about a cubit thick; the wood and reeds occupy eight inches, cowdung the same, and clay two inches. The people assured me, that a roof properly constructed will endure half a century, and resist for twenty years the small quantity of rain which falls in Sind; a roof commonly stands ten years without requiring repairs, but the mats are soon rotted by wet. The cost of building a good shop, of burnt brick on the ground floor in Roree, is 400 or 500 Rs., and double the sum if a story be added to it; a large shop may be constructed of sun-dried

The upper stem of moonj grass called in India Sirkee.

The thick part of the stem of moonj grass called in India Surkunda.