ed to six thousand dollars. The designs
for these textiles are often made in New York. _Peshawur_ is important
chiefly as a military station.

=Burma.=--British Burma includes the basin of the Irawadi River. The
uplands are wheat-fields; the lowlands produce rice. _Mandalay_ is a
river-port and commercial centre. _Rangoon_ is the seaport, with a
considerable ship-building industry that results from the teak forests.
Although the Irawadi is navigable for light craft, railways along the
valley have become a necessity; these centre at Rangoon.

The province of Madras is one of the most densely peopled parts of
India. The chief commercial products are cotton and teak-wood. _Madras_,
its commercial centre, has a very heavy foreign trade in hides, spices,
and cotton. The cotton manufactures are extensive. A yarn-dyed cotton
cloth, now imitated both in Europe and the United States, has made the
name famous.

=Kashmir.=--The native state Kashmir, situated high on the slopes of the
Karakorum Mountains, is known chiefly for the "Cashmere" shawls made
there. The shawls are hand-woven and represent the highest style of the
weaver's art. The best require many years each in the making; they
command prices varying from five hundred to five thousand dollars. This
industry centres at _Srinagar_.

=Other British States.=--The Straits Settlements are so called because
they face the Straits of Malacca. They include several colonies, chief
of which are Singapore, Penang, and Malacca. The Straits ports are free
from export and import duties, a regulation designed to encourage the
concentration of Malaysian products there--in other words, to encourage
a transit trade.

The policy has proved a wise one, and the trade at the three
ports--_Singapore_, _Penang_, and _Malacca_--aggregates about six
hundred million dollars yearly. About two-thirds of this sum represents
the business of Singapore. Tin constitutes about half the exports, a
large share going to the United States. Spices, rubber, gutta-percha,
tapioca, and rattan constitute the remaining trade. Rice, cotton cloth,
and opium are the imports.

The Federated Malay States, situated in the Malay peninsula, and the
northern part of Borneo are also British possessions. Their trade and
products are similar to the rest of the Malaysian possessions.

=Dutch East India.=--The Dutch possessions include nearly all the islands
of the Malay Archipelago and the western part of New Guinea. Of t