ves about them, and sell them to the
merchants. They are sometimes made of cotton mixed with silk, and
also altogether of silk. They make also pieces of silk of various
bright colours, called _bulawan_; the sky-blue, dark-blue, scarlet,
and yellow, are vivid colours, produced by their mode of dying the
silk before it is manufactured. They manufacture their silks from
_Bengal raw silk_, which they call _emfitla_. The _bulawan_ is
215 striped, or chequered, pink, blue, yellow, scarlet, and green: it
resembles what is called, in England, Persian, but it is much
stronger, and more[156] durable, though equally light. The silk
sashes, called _hazam_, are made in large quantities, and are
deserving of imitation in Europe; they are very substantial, but of
the same superior colours with the _bulawan_. They are made
generally half a yard wide, and three yards long: these sell at
Fas, from two to fifty dollars each. The superior kind made for the
ladies of the _horam_[157], or emperor's seraglio, for the ladies
of the bashaws, and for those of the great and opulent, are
intermixed with a beautiful gold-thread, much superior to any that
is manufactured in Europe, insomuch, that the gold-thread imported
from Leghorn and Marseilles is used only in such _hazams_ as are
made for exportation to Sudan, Draha, or Bled-el-Jereed, but those
made for the great and opulent, for home consumption, are
manufactured with the gold thread of the Fas manufacture. Whether
these expert artificers learned the mystery of gold beating, and
gold wire drawing, by which they obtain gold-thread, from the
216 Egyptians, I am not competent to say; but _they_ say they derived
it in ancient times from the Arabs, as well as the art of cutting,
polishing, and setting precious stones. They make a composition in
imitation of amber, which cannot, by the keenest eye, be
distinguished from the natural amber, the latter, however, by[158]
friction attracts cotton, but the manufactured amber does not; this
is the only criterion by which they ascertain the true from the
false amber. They also compose artificial stones with equal
sagacity; the topaz, the emerald, and the ruby they imitate to
perfection. The wool with which they make shawls almost equal in
appearance to those of Kashmere, is procured from the sh