The inhabitants of this terrestrial paradise, who were as beautiful as their climate, possessed the reputation of being superior in genius and industry to the rest of the Hindoos. The arts and sciences flourished among them; and their manufactures of palanquins, bedsteads, coffers, cabinets, spoons, and inlaid work, were renowned throughout the East. But the fabric which tended most powerfully to diffuse their reputation for ingenuity were their shawls, those soft and exquisite articles of dress which, from that day to this, have enjoyed the patronage of the fair throughout the world. In the days of Bernier these shawls were comparatively little known in Europe; yet his account of them, though highly accurate as far as it goes, is brief and rather unsatisfactory. During the three or four months which he spent in this beautiful country he made several excursions to the surrounding mountains, where, amid the wildest and most majestic scenery, he beheld with wonder, he tells us, the natural succession of generation and decay. At the bottom of many precipitous abysses, where man’s foot had never descended, he saw hundreds of enormous trunks, hurled down by time, and heaped upon each other in decay; while at their foot, or between their crumbling branches, young ones were shooting up and flourishing. Some of the trees were scorched and burnt, either blasted by the thunderbolt, or, according to the traditions of the peasantry, set on fire in the heat of summer by rubbing against each other, when agitated by fierce burning winds.