1 292 HISTORY OF THE SIKHS.
2 ture at both places should not equal that produced
3 at Cashmere. The wool is not indigenous to the
4 valley, but brought from Ladakh, and provided the
5 quality is good, the same wool might be spun into
6 as fine and elegant threads at Umritsir and Loodia-
7 nah as at Cashmere, even though the weavers of
8 the shawls, and the other people concerned in the
9 preparation of the raw material, who resort to these
10 places, may be inferior to those in Cashmere.
11 There is no doubt, that the emigrants employed in
12 the manufacture of shawls, are unhappy ; they look
13 in vain for their green plots of land, the lakes and
14 cool streams which give fertility and beauty to
15 Cashmere. Immured in the narrow, close, dirty
16 lanes of Umritsir, they pine in misery and indigence.
17 Hundreds of these poor creatures are carried off
18 annually by fever, cholera, and other epidemic
19 diseases. Were an inducement held out to them
20 to return to Cashmere, and there prosecute their
21 Jabour in the manufacture of shawls, and the culti-
22 vation of the soil, under British rule, we might again
23 see the “ earthly paradise,” peopled by a happy
24 race, but neither under the Sikh government nor
25 that of Goolab Singh can such be expected.