A history of the Sikhs, from the origin of the nation to the battles of the Sutlej.

2

HISTORY OF THE SIKHS

CHAP. I

its vast solitudes appals the heart, and naught living meets
Grain, and the eye; yet the shawl-wool goat gives a value to the rocky
shawl woolastes of that elevated region, and its scanty acres yield
of Ladakh.
unequalled crops of wheat and barley, where the stars can
be discerned at midday and the thin air scarcely bears the
sound of thunder to the ear.1 The heat and 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 neighSilks, in- bourhood, give an importance, the one to its manufactures
digo, and of silks and carpets, and the other to the wheat, the indigo,
cotton of
Multan. and the cotton of its fields.2 The southern slopes of the
1 Shawl wool is produced most abundantly, and of the finest
quality, in the steppes between the Shayuk and the main branch of
the Indus. About 100,000 rupees, or ~10,000 worth may be carried
down the valley of the Sutlej to Ludhiana and Delhi. (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 commodities.
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.)
2 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 may 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