But, to the knowing, there is still a higher grade of blanket. This is not, as one expert (_sic_) would have it, an attempted copying of ancient blankets, but a continuation of an art which he declares to be lost. There are several old weavers who preserve in themselves all the old and good of the best days of blanket weaving. They use native dyes, native wool,--with bayeta when they can get it,--and they spin their wool to a tension that makes it as durable as fine steel. They weave with care, and after the old fashions, following the ancient shapes and designs, and produce blankets that are as good as any that were ever made in the palmiest days of the art. Such blankets take long in weaving, and are both rare and expensive. I have just had one of these fine blankets made (January, 1903), and in every sense of the word it is equal to any old blanket I ever saw. The common blankets and the extra common are sold by the pound, the price, of course, varying, and of late years steadily increasing. Half-fancy blankets are generally sold by the piece, and vary in price according to the harmony of the colors, the fineness of the weave, and the striking characteristics of the design. This is also true of native wool fancy, the price being determined by the Indian according to her notions of the length of the purchaser's purse. On the other hand, Germantown yarn having a fixed purchasable price, the blankets made from it are to be bought by the pound. These remarks, necessarily, refer to the original purchases from the Indian. There are no general rules of purchase price followed by traders, dealers, or retail salesmen. In the original colors, as I have already shown, there are white, brown, gray, and black, the last rather a grayish-black, or, better still, as Matthews describes it, rusty. He also says: "They still employ to a great extent their native dyes of yellow, reddish, and black. There is good evidence that they formerly had a blue dye; but indigo, originally introduced, I think, by the Mexicans, has susperseded this. If they, in former days, had a native blue and a native yellow, they must also, of course, have had a green, and they now make green of their native yellow and indigo, the latter being the only imported dye-stuff I have ever seen in use among them.... The brilliant red figures in their finer blankets were, a few years ago, made entirely of bayeta, and this material is still (1881) largely used. Bayeta is a bright scarlet cloth with a long nap, much finer in appearance than the scarlet strouding which forms such an important article in the Indian trade of the North." This bayeta or baize was unravelled, and the Indian often retwisted the warp to make it firmer than originally, and then rewove it into his incomparable blankets.