CHAPTER XXXV. 556

A PIVOTAL POINT 559 THE MISTAKES OF TWO PEOPLE. Margaret Bertha Wright. 567 LIMOGES, AND ITS PORCELAIN. George L. Catlin. 576 THREE ROSES. Julia C.R. Dorr. 585 THE PRACTICAL HISTORY OF A PLAY. William H. Rideing. 586 HOW SHE KEPT HER VOW: A NARRATIVE OF FACTS. S.G.W. Benjamin. 594 HEINRICH HEINE. A. Parker. 604 DAWN. John B. Tabb. 612 MRS. MARCELLUS. Olive Logan. 613 AUTOMATISM. H.C. Wood, M.D. 627 OUR MONTHLY GOSSIP. C. B. T. 637 PEOPLE'S HOUSES: A DIALOGUE. L.W. 640 "TIME TURNS THE TABLES." 642 SEEING IS BELIEVING. A. T. 642 LITERATURE OF THE DAY. 645 BOOKS RECEIVED. 648

THE RUINS OF THE COLORADO VALLEY.

It was about seventy years before our English race gained a foothold on the eastern coast of America that, far away in the West, the seeds of another form of Eastern civilization began to fall upon ground which now belongs to our national territory. In the wilderness near the western border of New Mexico there stands a great crag, torn into curious shapes by the wear of ages, bearing on its summit a ruined fortress of a forgotten people and on its side hieroglyphic writing which no one can decipher. The same smooth sandstone surface which invited the picture-writing of the ancients has also tempted later passers-by to perpetuate their names. A long series of inscriptions in Spanish, begun before the first English had landed at Jamestown, tells how explorers, conquerors, government emissaries and missionaries of the Cross, passing that way, paused to leave their names on the enduring rock. That imperishable monument bears record to all time that this remotest region of our country, the last which the new life of the nineteenth century penetrates, was the first point to be touched by European civilization, if we except one old Florida fort. It is three hundred and forty years since the Spaniards entered New Mexico. There, almost at the centre of the continent, in the valleys of the Rio Grande and Colorado, the old Spanish life has remained, as unprogressive as a Chinese province, continuing to the middle of this century a kind of modified feudal system. But this old declining civilization of the South-west is new in comparison with that which the Spanish conquerors found existing in the country when they entered it. A remnant of that old half-civilized life lingers still, almost unchanged by contact with white men, in the seven citadels of the Moquis perched on the high _mesas_ of Arizona, while in the Pueblo villages of New Mexico we find it more affected by the Spanish influence.

The attraction which drew the conquerors of Mexico forty-five days' journey away into the North was the fame which had reached them of the Seven Cities of Cibola (the buffalo), great in wealth and population, lying in the valley of the Rio de Zuñi. To the grief of the invaders, they found not cities, but rather villages of peaceful agricultural people dwelling in great pueblos three and four stories high, and they searched in vain for the rumored stores of gold. At that time the pueblos held a large population skilled in many arts of civilization. They cultivated large tracts of ground, wove fabrics of cotton and produced ornate pottery. Their stone-masonry was admirable. But even three hundred years ago it seems that the people were but a remnant of what they had once been. Even then the conquerors wondered at the many ruins which indicated a decline from former greatness. The people have not now the same degree of skill in their native arts which the race once had, and it is probable that when the Spaniards came and found them declining in numbers the old handicrafts were already on the wane.

In a remote age the ancestors of these Pueblo tribes, or a race of kindred habits, filled most of that vast region which is drained by the Colorado River and its affluents, and spread beyond into the valley of the Rio Grande. The explorers of a great extent of country in Utah, Arizona, New Mexico and Colorado have found everywhere evidences of the wide distribution and wonderful industry of that ancient people. On the low land which they used to till lie the remains of their villages--rectangular buildings of enormous dimensions and large circular _estufas_, or halls for council and worship. On the sides of the savage cliffs that wall in or overarch the cañons are scattered in every crevice and wrinkle those strange and picturesque ruins which give us the name "Cliff-dwellers" to distinguish this long-forgotten people. And on commanding points, seen far away down the cañons or across the mesas, stand the solitary watch-towers where sentinels might signal to the villagers below on the approach of Northern barbarians.

It is only a few years since Mr. John Ruskin rejected a suggestion that he should visit the United States, urging among other reasons that it would be impossible for him to exist even for a short time in a country where there are no old castles. We Americans were disposed to resent this slap at our country, and not a few newspaper editors relieved their minds by intimating that we could get along quite comfortably without old castles and without Mr. Ruskin. But, after all, it is a consolation for our national pride to know that the fault is not in our country, but in Mr. Ruskin's ignorance of American archæology. We have old castles without number in the Western Territories--ruined fortifications and dwellings of an unknown antiquity, perhaps as old as Warwick or Bangor, as impregnable as the highest cliff-built castle of the Rhine, as grand in situation as the Drachenfels or Dover Castle.

Only the more eastern part of the great domain held by that ancient people has yet been examined thoroughly with reference to its antiquities. Within the last decade Mr. W H. Jackson of the United States Geological Survey has brought to notice, by his admirable photographs and descriptions, the remains in the cliffs and cañons of South-western Colorado and the adjacent region. Thirty years ago Lieutenant Simpson described the ruined pueblos of New Mexico. But in regard to the ruins farther west, seen by Major Powell in his headlong course down the Colorado River, and the innumerable remains of cities, fortresses and canals mentioned by visitors to Arizona, but little careful investigation has been made. I believe that few richer fields for an antiquary can be found in the world than this south-western region of our own country. I cannot doubt that a thorough comparative examination of these remains would throw a new light upon the relationship between the ancient and modern civilized tribes, and upon their connection with their far more civilized Aztec neighbors of the South. As yet, hardly an attempt at excavation has been made in the Colorado Valley.

There is no other district which embraces in so small a compass so great a number and variety of the Cliff-dwellers' ruined works as the cañon of the Little Rio Mancos[1] in South-western Colorado. The stream rises in a spur of the San Juan Mountains, near the remote mining-camp called Parrott City. Flowing southward for a few miles through an open valley, it is soon enclosed between the walls of a profound cañon which cuts for nearly thirty miles through a tableland called the Mesa Verde. The cañon is wide enough to permit the old inhabitants to plant their crops along the stream, and the cliffs rising on either side to a height of two thousand feet are so curiously broken and grooved and shelving, from the decay of the soft horizontal strata and the projection of the harder, as to offer remarkable facilities for building fortified houses hard of approach and easy of defence. Therefore the whole length of the cañon is filled with ruins, and for fifteen miles beyond it to the borders of New Mexico, where the river meets the Rio San Juan, the valley bears many traces of the ancient occupation. The scenery of the cañon is wild and imposing in the highest degree. In the dry Colorado air there are few lichens or weather-stains to dull the brightness of the strata to the universal hoariness of moister climates: the vertical cliffs, standing above long slopes of débris, are colored with the brilliant tints of freshly-quarried stone. A gay ribbon of green follows the course of the rivulet winding down through the cañon till it is lost to sight in the vista of crags. The utter silence and solitude of the wilderness reigns through the valley. It is not occupied by any savage tribe, and only a few white men within the last few years have passed through it and told of its wonders; and yet its whole length is but one series of houses and temples that were forsaken centuries ago. I can hardly imagine a more exciting tour of exploration than that which Mr. Jackson's party made on first entering this cañon in 1874.

Above the entrance of the cañon the evidences of pre-historic life begin. On the bottom-land, concealed by shrubbery, are the half-obliterated outlines of square and circular buildings. The houses were of large size, and were plainly no temporary dwelling-places, for an accumulation of decorated pottery fills the ground about them, indicating long occupation. No doubt they were built of adobe--masses of hard clay dried in the sun--which the wear of ages has reduced to smoothly-rounded mounds. For some miles down the cañon remains of this sort occur at short intervals, and at one point there stands a wall built of squared sandstone blocks. Along the ledges of the cliffs on the right bits of ruinous masonry are detected here and there, but for a time there is nothing to excite close attention. At last a watchful eye is arrested by a more interesting object perched at a tremendous height on the western wall of the cañon. It is a house built upon a shelf of rock between the precipices, but, standing seven hundred feet above the stream and differing not at all in color from the crags about it, only the sharpest eyesight can detect the unusual form of the building and the windows marking the two stories. The climb up to the house-platform is slow and fatiguing, but the trouble is repaid by a sight of one of the most curious ruins on this continent. Before the door of the house, part of the ledge has been reserved for a little esplanade, and to make it broader three small abutments of stone, which once supported a floor, are built on the sloping edge of the rock. Beyond this the house is entered by a small aperture which served as a door. It is the best specimen of a Cliff-dweller's house that remains to our time. The walls are admirably built of squared stones laid in a hard white mortar. The house is divided into two stories of three rooms each. Behind it a semicircular cistern nearly as high as the house is built against the side of it, and a ladder is arranged for descending from an upper window to the water-level. The floor of the second story was supported by substantial cedar timbers, but only fragments of them remain. The roof, too, has entirely disappeared, but the canopy of natural rock overhanging serves to keep out the weather. The front rooms in both stories are the largest and are most carefully finished. Perhaps they were the parlor and "best bedroom" of some pre-historic housewife. They are plastered throughout with fine smooth mortar, and even in that remote age the mania for household decoration had a beginning: floor, walls and ceiling were colored a deep red, surrounded by a broad border of white.

The same cliff on which this house stands has on its side many other ruins--some half destroyed by gradual decay, some crushed by falling rocks, none so perfect as the one described; but all are crowded into the strangest unapproachable crevices of the cañon-wall, like the crannies which swallows choose to hold their nests, far removed from the possibility of depredation. Some are so utterly inaccessible that the explorers, with all their enthusiasm and activity, have never been able to reach them. How any beings not endowed with wings could live at such points it is hard to conceive: it makes one suspicious that the Cliff-dwellers had not quite outgrown the habits of monkey ancestors.

As the cañon widens with the descent of the stream, the ruins in the western wall increase in number. One fearful cliff a thousand feet in height is chinked all over its face with tiny houses of one room each, but only a few of them can be detected with the naked eye. One, which was reached by an explorer at the peril of his life, stands intact: ceiling and floor are of the natural rock, and the wall is built in a neat curve conforming to the shape of the ledge.

A mile farther down the stream there is a most interesting group of houses. Eight hundred feet above the valley there is a shelf in the cliff sixty feet in length that is quite covered by a house. The building contains four large rooms, a circular sacred apartment and smaller rooms of irregular shape. It was called by its discoverers "The House of the Sixteen Windows." Behind this house the cliff-side rises smooth and perpendicular thirty feet, but it can be scaled by an ancient stairway cut into it which ascends to a still higher ledge. The stairs lead to the very door of another house filling a niche a hundred and twenty feet long. A great canopy of solid rock overarches the little fortress, reaching far forward beyond the front wall, while from below it is absolutely unapproachable except by the one difficult stairway of niches cut in the rock. In time of war it must have been impregnable. These dwellings have given more ideas about their interior furnishing than any of the others. Among the accumulated rubbish were found corn and beans stored away. In the lower house were two large water-jars of corrugated pottery standing on a floor covered with neatly-woven rush matting. In a house not far above were found a bin of charred corn, and a polished hatchet of stone made with remarkable skill.

From this point onward both the valley and the cliffs are filled with the traces of a numerous population, every mile of travel bringing many fresh ones into sight. Among the cliff-houses there is of necessity a variety in form and size as great as the differences of the caves and crevices that hold them; but among the buildings of the low ground there is more uniformity, not only in this cañon, but in all the valleys of the region. Most of them may be classed as aggregated dwellings or pueblos with rectangular rooms, round watch-towers and large circular buildings. To these must be added a few which seem to have been built only for defence. The straight walls have generally fallen, except the parts supported by an angle of a building; but, as usual in old masonry, the circular walls have much better resisted decay.

About midway down the cañon the curved wall of a large ruin rises above the thicket. It is a building of very curious design. The outer wall was an exact circle of heavy masonry a hundred and thirty feet in circumference. Within, there is another circular wall, concentric with the outer, enclosing one round room with a diameter of twenty feet. The annular space between the two walls was divided by partitions into ten small apartments. Other buildings of the same type occur in this region, some of much larger size and with triple walls. Even in this one, which is comparatively well preserved, the original height is uncertain, though the ruin still stands about fifteen feet high. The vast quantity of débris about some of them indicates that they were of no insignificant height, and their perfect symmetry of form, the careful finish of the masonry, the large dimensions and great solidity, made them the most imposing architectural works of that ancient people. I find no reason to doubt that they were their temples, and the presumption is very strong that they were temples for sun-worship. The occurrence of a circular room in connection with nearly every group of buildings is of special interest, as seeming to link the Cliff-dwellers to the modern Pueblo tribes in their religious customs.

Most striking and picturesque of all the ruins are the round watch-towers. On commanding points in the valley, and on the highest pinnacles of the cliffs overlooking the surface of the mesa, they occur with a frequency which is almost pathetic as an indication of the life of eternal vigilance which was led by that old race through the years, perhaps centuries, of exterminating warfare which the savage red men from the North waged upon them. To us the suffering of frontier families at the hands of the same bloodthirsty savages is heartrending. What was it to those who saw year by year their whole race's life withering away, crushed by those wild tribes?

Near the lower end of the cañon stands one of the most perfect of these towers, rising sixteen feet above the mound on which it is built. It was once attached to an oblong stone building which seems to have been a strongly-fortified house. The rectangular walls, as usual, are prostrate, and have left the tower standing as solitary and picturesque and as full of mystery as the round-towers of Ireland.

After the stream breaks from its long confinement out into the open plain of the San Juan Valley the traces of old life are still abundant, but they present no features very different from those above. At the cañon's mouth an Indian trail strikes away toward the north-west. It passes a remarkable group of ruins at a spot called Aztec Springs, and continues to the McElmo, the next _arroya_, or dry stream-bed, west of the Rio Mancos. Aztec Springs no longer deserve the name, for within a short time the last trace of water has disappeared from the spot, showing that the slow drying up of the great South-west country, which has been going forward for ages, and which starved out the old inhabitants, is still progressing. In the dry season there is no water within many miles of this spot, though it is strewn with the remains of stone buildings covering several acres and indicating a large population of industrious people who must have lived by agriculture. Until a long comparative study has been made of all the remains of this race it is mere guesswork to estimate the age of the ruins; but when the prostrate condition of these walls is compared with the state in which the Chaco ruins of New Mexico are found, and when we consider that the latter have no doubt been deserted for at least three hundred and fifty years, it is reasonable to suppose an age of a thousand years for these massive walls at Aztec Springs. Many other great structures of this region, which seem to be coeval with these, are situated many miles away from any perennial water, and the time which has elapsed since those sites were suitable for large farming-towns must be counted by centuries. In this group are two large quadrangular buildings with walls still fifteen feet high, two of the circular estufas, besides a multitude of half-distinguishable walls of dwellings. It is the largest group of ruins in Colorado.

Not many miles beyond these so-called springs the trail leads into the dry bed of the McElmo near its head, and another long succession of antiquities is entered upon, but to enumerate them further would be tedious, for the ruins of the Mancos are good representatives of all those which are found along the courses of the Animas, La Plata, McElmo, Montezuma, Chelley and other tributary valleys of the San Juan. Nevertheless, there are a few buildings here and there of some unusual interest which cannot be passed by without mention. On the verge of a little side-cañon of the McElmo there is a curious instance of the keen ingenuity of this people in taking every advantage of the fantastic, castle-like shapes which Nature has formed out of the cañon-walls. High on the edge of the mesa appears the ragged outline of a ruinous watch-tower sharply drawn against the clear, unvarying blue of the sky. It seems to be a tower of unusual height, but a closer view shows it to be half of Nature's building. A tall fragment of rock, torn from its bed, has rolled down the slope to the edge of the steep descent. This rock the old builders have chosen to crown with a little round tower where a sentinel, guarding the village behind him from stealthy attacks, could command a wide sweep of country. The same thing on a larger scale is found at another point where the dry McElmo meets with the drier Hovenweep--a tributary without tribute. In this position stands an enormous rock nearly cubical in shape. Its high sides make it a natural fortress strong against an enemy without artillery, and to its natural strength the Cliff-dwellers have added a battlement of masonry. But among all the ruined strongholds of the region that which is called the Legendary Rock has a pre-eminent interest on account of the Moqui romance or tradition which clings to it. The rock is a grand and solitary crag standing on a plateau of sandstone from which the soil is washed away. It is far from water: a garrison must have been dependent wholly on the very precarious rain-supply. About it runs an outer rampart of stone, and on the rock itself is built a fortress. It is several years since an aged member of the Moqui tribe first confided to a white man versed in his language the legend of this rock. It has been widely published, and considered of much significance. The Moqui patriarch related how his people in the old time were many. Their tribe dwelt in the North-east. One year they were visited by strangers from the North, who came peaceably at first, but came again another year, and year by year encroached and grew more warlike. At last the Northern strangers gained the mastery and drove them from their homes. In a long, slow struggle the Moqui forefathers gradually lost their ground, till at last they made one final, desperate fight for their old homes at the fortress of the Legendary Rock. They conquered their besiegers, but with such fearful carnage that the rocks bear still the stains of the blood-streams that flowed in that battle, and the remnant of the besieged were glad to make an unmolested retreat to the mesas of Arizona, where they dwell to this day.

The story is an interesting one, and has been honored by the explorers with a place in their government report, for it shows a belief among the Moquis that those old builders were their kinsmen. But, considering the fact that the first Spanish discoverers found the Moqui tribe in nearly the same condition as we see it now, and that this story therefore must have been handed down for at least three hundred years among an unlettered people, I am as much disposed to distrust the other details of it as I am to doubt that the red iron-stains in the rock were caused by the blood of their ancestors.

In the neighboring Montezuma Cañon, just beyond the State border, there are some remains built after an unusual manner with stones of great size. One building of many rooms, nearly covering a little solitary mesa, is constructed of huge stone blocks not unlike the pre-historic masonry of Southern Europe. In the same district there is a ruined line of fortification from which the smaller stones have fallen away and are crumbling to dust, leaving only certain enormous upright stones standing. They rise to a height of seven feet above the soil, and the lower part is buried to a considerable depth. Their resemblance to the hoary Druidical stones of Carnac and Stonehenge is striking, and there is nothing in their appearance to indicate that they belong to a much later age than those primeval monuments of Europe.

All the certain knowledge that we have of the history and manners of the Cliff-dwellers may be very briefly told, for there is no written record of their existence except their own rude picture-writing cut or painted on the cañon-walls, and it is not likely that those hieroglyphics will ever be deciphered. But much may be inferred from their evident kinship to the Moquis of our time; and the resemblance of the ancient architecture and ceramics to the arts as they are still practised in the degenerate pueblos of Arizona gives us many intimations in regard to the habits of the Cliff-dwellers.

It was centuries ago--how long a time no one will ever know--when that old race was strong and numerous, filling the great region from the Rio Grande to the Colorado of the West, and from the San Juan Mountains far down into Northern Mexico. They must have numbered many hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions. It is not probable that they were combined under one government or that they were even closely leagued together, but that they were essentially one in blood and language is strongly indicated by the similarity of their remains. That they were sympathetic in a common hostility to the dangerous savage tribes about them can hardly be doubted. They were of peaceful habits and lived by agriculture, having under cultivation many thousands of acres in the rich river-bottoms, which they knew well how to irrigate from streams swollen in summer by the melting snows of the high mountain-ranges. We read of their dry canals in Arizona, so deep that a mounted horseman can hide in them. We know that they raised crops of corn and beans, and in the south cotton, which they skilfully wove. That they had commercial dealings across their whole country is shown by the quantity of shell-ornaments brought from the Pacific coast which are found in their Colorado dwellings. They did not understand the working of metals, but their implements of stone are of most excellent workmanship. Their weapons indicate the practice of hunting, and while the race was still numerous their forts and their sharp obsidian arrows made easy their resistance to the wandering savage hordes.

I believe that no instance can be cited of a people still in their Stone Age who have surpassed that old race in the mason's art: indeed, I doubt if any such people has even approached their skill in that respect. The difficulty of constructing a great work of well-squared, hammer-dressed stones is enormously increased if the masons must work only with stone implements. Imagine the infinite, toilsome patience of a people who in such a way could rear the ancient Pueblo Bonito of New Mexico, five hundred and forty feet long, three hundred and fourteen wide and four stories high! In one wall of a neighboring building of stone less carefully dressed it is estimated that there were originally no less than thirty million pieces, which were transported, fashioned and laid by men without a beast of burden or a trowel, chisel or hammer of metal.

Nothing marks more strikingly the vast advance which these people had made from the condition of their savage neighbors than their evident efforts not only for household comfort, but even for the beautifying of their homes. I have referred to the rush-carpeted floor of the "House of the Sixteen Windows" and the decorated walls of the two-story house on the Mancos; but they, like other semicivilized peoples, found the first expression for their love of the beautiful in the ceramic art. The variety of graceful forms and decorations found in their pottery is endless. In some regions the country for miles is strewn with the fragments of their earthenware. The ware is usually pale gray shading to white: the decoration is in black or red, often in the angular designs commonly called "Greek patterns." The Moquis of our time produce a handsome ware closely resembling that of the ancient people. But the old cliff-painters and the modern potters often sacrificed beauty to a passion for producing the most wildly-grotesque forms. There is a certain general resemblance, which often strikes me forcibly, but which is almost indefinable, between the ceramic and sculptured forms of the Mississippi Mound-builders, the Pueblo tribes and the ancient Mexicans. The resemblance seems to lie partly in a certain capacity which those peoples possessed in common of producing the most frightfully-grotesque forms ever evolved by the human imagination--forms plainly intended to suggest living beings, yet not at all transgressing the injunction against "anything that is in the heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the waters under the earth." The resemblance seems to me very significant.

At the time of the Spanish conquest the Pueblo tribes were worshippers of the sun and fire, like all the races of this continent which were above barbarism. To-day, even in those pueblos where a corrupted form of the Roman faith is accepted, there are traces of the old sun-worship mingled with it, and in all pueblos there are large circular rooms called estufas reserved for councils and for worship. The invariable appearance of estufas among the ruined towns, and even on the ledges of the cliffs, shows what sacredness was attached to the circular room, which perhaps was symbolic of the sun's orb: it indicates a unity of religious faith between the ancients and moderns.

The priest who chronicled the events of the first expedition to New Mexico was impressed with the great ruined towns which they saw even before crossing the desert of Arizona. There is good reason to believe that the cliff-dwellings, the last retreats of a persecuted people, were abandoned before that time. But how could a people so numerous, intelligent and civilized fall a prey to stupid, roving savages? The wild tribes never could have won the fight against their more quick-witted neighbors if the ancients had not begun their own destruction.

The story which they have left recorded on the face of the country is of this sort. At some very remote time they began agriculture in the valleys of the South-west. They found the rainfall of the region too limited for farming without irrigation, but the whole country was intersected by streams fed through summer by the snows of the mountain-tops and the abundant springs of the wooded slopes and uplands. Thus their crops were watered and yielded increase with a regularity unknown to farmers who must look to the summer rainfall for success. The people prospered, multiplied and spread over a wide country. In every green valley rose their great common dwellings and circular temples. By superior numbers and intelligence they were strong against their enemies. But the spreading population required a great wood-supply. The finest of the trees were felled for timbering their houses, and whole forests were swept away to give them fuel and perhaps to feed perpetual sacred fires. The country was all too little watered at the best, and the mountain-sides, once stripped of their covering, oftentimes dried up and no new growth of trees appeared. Old men began to observe that the streams did not maintain their even flow through the whole year as when they were young, and lamented the good old times when there was no lack of water for irrigation. The streams began to be swollen with disastrous floods in spring and winter, and to dwindle away alarmingly in summer. So through centuries the gradual destruction of the wood brought ever-increasing drought, and drought led in its train famine, disease and wholesale death. The people were decimated and discouraged, and on the northern frontier began to be at the mercy of savage raiders. They fled from their pleasant valley-homes to hide in caves and dens of the earth, and built the cliff-dwellings. There a remnant lingered in unceasing fear of the foes who coveted the fruits of their toil; but even from these refuges they were driven ages ago. Where they used to build villages and cultivate fields are now barren gulches where two or three times a year a resistless flood rushes down from the mountains that can no longer retain their moisture. Thus ended their national suicide.

It was a strange ignorance that led them to their own destruction, was it not? Yet we as a nation from Maine to California are recklessly working the same ruin. We are stripping our mountains a hundred times more rapidly than they, but who cares whether the forests are restored?

As a child I played and bathed in a pretty tumbling brook among the Litchfield hills, and wondered that so small a stream but fifty years before had given power to all the mills now ruined on its banks. Twenty years more have passed, and now in the heat of summer there is hardly water for a child to bathe. The hills are stripped, the stream has dwindled, but the spring floods tear through the valley like a deluge. Even the larger streams that still turn the mill-wheels and make the wealth of Connecticut are not the trusty servants that they once were. In summer they grow weak and must be supplemented with steam, and at times they rise in fury and carry destruction before them. It is the beginning of woes, but our Atlantic slope with its heavy rainfall cannot easily be changed to a desert. In the far West it is different. Colorado, Nevada and California, with a less regular rainfall and with greater floods and smaller streams, would soon find the desert encroaching on the habitable land. But in these very States the waste of timber is most extravagant. Mining-camps and cities devour the woods about them, and in every dry summer many hundred square miles are burned by the recklessness of Indians and white men. Where the Californian mountains have been cleared, the browsing millions of sheep keep down all new growth, and, bringing great wealth in our age, they threaten to impoverish posterity.

The dreary experiment has been tried by the ancient races of both continents. Why should we repeat it? The question should command the earnest attention of State and national governments. In our own land already one old race has wrought its own destruction in this same way.

ALFRED TERRY BACON.

[Footnote 1: In studying the ruins of the Mancos and neighboring cañons I have made constant use of the reports of explorations by Mr. W. H. Jackson and Mr. W. H. Holmes in _Bulletins of U. S. Geolog. and Geograph. Survey_, Second Series, No. 1, and _Annual Report_ of the same survey for 1876.]

THE ARTS OF INDIA.

The study of the industrial arts of India, if the warnings of learned Orientalists are to be of any avail, is not a matter to be rashly undertaken. All Indian art must be viewed in reference to Indian religion. Forms, materials and colors have meanings that can only be caught by familiar acquaintance with a symbolism both intricate and obscure. Little decorative touches that to the untaught Western eye are introduced merely to give an artistic finish to an involved design, or to give room for bringing in the bit of color demanded by the sense of harmony, have all a meaning not necessarily connected with art. While in the West the problems of art are dealt with by men whose eyes are bent on art alone, the Oriental artist solves these problems while keeping his eyes fixed upon religion. The maturity of Indian religious life was reached several centuries before our era began: it then took a form which it still retains. There is no secular life from which it can be distinguished. When a domestic utensil is examined, the first question to be answered is, What religious meaning attaches to it? This is an appalling fact, for it means that the arts of India cannot be appreciated as the Hindus appreciate them until we have mastered an accumulation of mythological and legendary lore such as possibly no other country has amassed.

To appreciate the full extent of a task that already seems to hang like a shadow over the whole of what yet remains of one's life, it may be pointed out that the Vedas form only one of four groups of sacred writings, that there are four Vedas, and that each one of the four consists of four parts. Then there are Upa-Vedas, Ved-Angas and Upangas; and under the last-named fall the epics of the _Ramayana_, of ninety-six thousand lines, and the _Mahabharata_, of two hundred and twenty thousand long lines, not to mention others. These are mere glimpses into a vista long and dark, and it seems a little odd that one should be called upon to go through so much in order to appreciate a specimen of carving from Vizagapatam, an inlaid table-top from Agra, a box of Cashmere lacquer or a panel of carved sandal-wood from Canara. The fact is, that the matter may be looked at from another point of view--that taken up by those who decline to see anything in a painting but canvas and paint--who care for nothing in the shape of sentiment or story, but have a single eye to art. In this way the beauty and harmony of Oriental coloring, the delicacy and wonderful finish in all manner of carvings, the skill displayed in inlaying and chasing--in a word, all the points of industrial art in India--may be both enjoyed and understood without a reference to the Puranas or the Code of Manu, or without the observer's being able to enumerate the avatars of Vishnu. The inquirer is thus borne up against the deterrent influence of specialists, with the plaintive notes of whose voice he has become in all probability elsewhere familiar. It is the same voice, to all intents and purposes, that haunts the graves of Egypt, the ruins of Rhag[oe], the tombs of Etruria and Magna Græcia, the workshops of King-teh-chin and the mounds of Pachacamac. It is heard, in short, all round the world, and its burden is ever the same: "Understand the religion of a people before peering into their arts." The obvious answer comes: Life is short and art is long: if to art religion be prefixed, all knowledge of art is at an end. It would be pleasant, no doubt, to tell at a glance what legend or myth is represented on a Greek vase, but meantime we can admire the form. It would be equally pleasant to be able to interpret the painting on a Chinese historical vase, but meantime we can admire the colors. So with Egypt, Persia and Peru: it will be well for the many to get at the industrial secrets of these countries if they never obtain even a glimpse of the underlying religious idea of the craftsman.

It is merely thrown out as a suggestion by the way, and without any intention of belittling the importance of studying the superstitions and philosophies of the world or of aiming at something more than a strictly industrial view of industrial art, that so much attention may be bestowed upon religions as the sources of ideas as to obscure the form and manner of their expression in art. Possibly the formation of an Indian museum at South Kensington may be productive of a longing desire to become acquainted with Rama and the lovely Sita, the strong Arjuna and the beauteous Draupadi; but it is hardly likely that this was the object of its formation or that it will lead to the acquisition of any more abstruse knowledge than such as comprises the weaving of rich textures, the blending of gay colors, or the industrial arts of damascening, carving and working in gold and silver and precious stones. In what has here to be said, at all events, only such references will be made to religion and legend as are absolutely necessary to a general understanding of the conditions under which Indian art has developed, and of the forms under which it is most frequently seen.

The Indian Museum--or rather the collection forming the Indian section of the South Kensington Museum--is of very recent formation. It may be said to have grown without developing. Its nucleus was formed in the days of the East India Company, and was stored in a little museum in Leadenhall street. There it long remained, and one of its chief attractions was Tippoo's tiger, now occupying a place of honor near the musical instruments, to which it bears some kind of a relation. The "tiger" is a wooden animal of ferocious aspect represented in the act of tearing a prostrate European soldier dressed in the military red coat and wearing a broad-brimmed felt hat of decidedly civil make. It was taken at the fall of Seringapatam, and was probably made by some European artificer for the delectation of the Tippoo Sultan. If not symbolical it was undoubtedly suggestive of pleasant thoughts to Tippoo, although as a musical instrument it could never have been much of a success. To tickle the sultan's ear the tiger when wound up emitted startling roars and groans, while its victim feebly moaned. But on a certain festive occasion after the "tiger" was brought to England the winding-up was unfortunately overdone, and long afterward the soldier stoically declined to moan. The odd musical toy has been brightened up to suit its new home, and its internal construction has also received proper attention to such purpose that the roaring can be reduced to something like method by merely passing the hand over a keyboard, and the resuscitated struggling red-coat moans as lustily as he did in the palmy days at Seringapatam.

Such is the instrument which played an important part in the Leadenhall Street Museum. When the East India Company passed away and the British government assumed the direct control of India, the tiger and all the other curiosities were sent first to Fife House, and thence to the India Office. The latter step was possibly taken on the advice of some utilitarian who wished to bring within reach of the officials an opportunity of acquiring some knowledge of India. Any such object was frustrated.

The director and curator were the only individuals known to visit the collection. It was then sent to South Kensington and placed in a temporary building, but still nobody looked in upon the tiger and the jade, the carvings and Bidri-work. They were still under the control of the India Office, and at length became a burden to it. Their failure to interest the public naturally led to a desire to transfer the responsibility of guardianship. This is not to be wondered at. The collection had, as has already been pointed out, merely grown in bulk. It was promiscuous in the worst sense. It consisted of a fortuitous concourse of articles taken in war or bought upon no ostensible system in peace. To these old Indian officers occasionally made testamentary additions of things picked up in their travels or acquired by inheritance or otherwise. International exhibitions have always been good for museums. The unsalable is often valuable, and exhibitions have been a source from which the Indian collection has reaped many solid benefits. Thus the accumulation increased in bulk and intrinsic value, but practically it still continued valueless. It was neither arranged nor inventoried. It continued to illustrate little more than the manner of its accumulation. Very naturally, the India Office in looking for relief from a useless burden turned first to the Science and Art Department under which South Kensington was flourishing. Its offer of a transfer was at first declined, but the authorities at the India Office would take no refusal. Their object was at once to get rid of the collection and of the cost of maintaining it, and at the same time to preserve its representative character and such individual identity as it possessed. They ultimately succeeded in both respects, though their success was not perfect. A part, including the collections of economic botany of wild Indian silk and lac, went to Kew. The zoological collection is in the hands of the trustees of the British Museum, and will eventually take its place in the new Natural History Museum at South Kensington. To the British Museum have gone the Indian Buddhist sculptures, but casts of these may hereafter be placed in the Indian Museum: certainly, in view of the influence of architectural decoration upon industrial art, they seem necessary to its completeness. All else was on the first of January last handed over to the Science and Art Department, and came under the management and control of Sir Philip Cunliffe-Owen, K. E. M. G., C. B. and director at South Kensington. It was characteristic of Sir Philip that he should undertake to have within six months a collection arranged and ready for public inspection which had not for twenty years been seen in anything like order. It had never before been catalogued, and had never before been so placed that it could be seen intelligently or at one view. The first thing to be done was the drawing up of an inventory. This work occupied six weeks, and on its completion the discovery was made that the collection was altogether inadequate to its purpose. It represented neither the arts nor the industries of India, and gave a very disjointed view of the resources of that country. The work, however, went on. Sir Philip used all his influence, both personal and official, to supplement defective departments. He made purchases and applied for loans. Her Majesty, the prince of Wales and the duke of Edinburgh made selections from their magnificent collections, and others were not slow to follow their example. The result was that in his race against time Sir Philip won by more than a month, making allowance for what has yet to be done with the contributions still being made. Few other men could have won a victory so complete with such apparent ease, because there are not many who could have imbued contributors with similar confidence or so thoroughly inspired an entire department with his own spirit of energy and well-regulated activity. A word or two may be said of his career.

His father was Charles Cunliffe-Owen, a captain in the royal navy, and at the age of twelve Philip entered the same service. He served for five years in the Mediterranean and the West Indies, and at seventeen was obliged by ill health to retire, but taking with him the habits a naval career was well calculated to engender or develop of promptitude and decision. After a rest of a few years he was appointed to the Science and Art Department, and gradually won the notice and confidence of his superiors. He was quick of apprehension, prompt in action and accurate in execution. Sir Henry Cole recognized these qualities in him, and entrusted him with the post of one of the superintendents of the Paris Exhibition of 1855. A few years took him upward through the rank of deputy-general superintendent of South Kensington Museum to that of assistant director in 1860. At subsequent international exhibitions he filled various offices as follows: at London, in 1862, director of the foreign sections; at Paris, in 1867, assistant executive commissioner; at Vienna, in 1873, secretary to the royal British commission; at Philadelphia, in 1876, executive commissioner; and at Paris, in 1878, secretary of the royal British commission. Meanwhile, in 1873, he was created a Companion of the Bath, and was advanced to the directorship of the South Kensington and Bethnal Green Museums on its becoming vacant by the retirement of Sir Henry Cole. In 1878 he received the honor of knighthood.

A good linguist and possessing rare tact and wonderful executive ability, Sir Philip has succeeded where many of his countrymen fail--namely, in making a favorable impression upon foreigners. Prepossessing in appearance and manner, he can dash through business at a speed calculated to astonish men of less energy and of a lower vitality, and he does it, moreover, without the faintest taint of the _brusquerie_ which almost as a rule bristles all over the less capable official. Red tape he abhors, and is as easy of access as a republican. He transacts his business as it arises, knows nothing of arrears, keeps nobody waiting, rises early, works incessantly, drinks nothing stronger than tea, has no office-hours and no rules--making both subservient to the business in hand, instead of following the example of the greater part of the world in fitting business to rule and time--and is only a little forgetful of social engagements. Such is the man to whom more than any other the credit is due of India's being first fairly if not fully represented in Europe by a museum containing specimens of all its native arts and industries.

Certain general impressions will be received from a walk through the galleries and from a hurried view of the sculptures, textile fabrics, arms, pottery, jewelry, furniture, lacquer and metal-work. Forms, combinations and decorative styles will catch the eye which seem not new, but merely changed from something seen elsewhere, as the ear will catch a well-known melody running through a profusion of intricate variations. The alternative questions occur: Is India the home of all the arts? or, Has it no original art? In one place stands a small table of Cashmere lacquer in which a great part of the decoration is surely Chinese: a small gold cup has a sculpturesque decoration as surely Greek. Here is a coffee-pot of Mongolian type, and a parcel-gilt vase of Greek: there are gold dishes after the Saracenic, inlaid-work decidedly Persian, and mosaic-work most certainly Florentine.

It is long since the connoisseur of Indian art awakened from the dream that India has been an isolated country. The fact is, that it lies in the way of all commerce between the far East and the West, and that it can be, and has been, approached as easily from land as from the sea. It has a long legendary history, but a comparatively short real history. The immigration of the Aryan race is said to have taken place about B.C. 3101, but from that period until the rise of Buddhism, in the sixth century B.C., there is nothing to guide us but legend. Putting aside what may have been learned of India by the Greeks from the troops from the Panjab and Afghanistan which swelled the gigantic army of Xerxes, Alexander's invasion of India (B.C. 327) may be said to have really opened the way to the acquisition by the Greeks of something like an exact though partial knowledge of the country pronounced by Herodotus the wealthiest and most populous in the world. In truth, the writings of Greeks who accompanied Alexander, and of Chinese pilgrims, and some temple-inscriptions, constitute the basis of Indian history. The commerce of India at a very early period extended far and wide. Arrian, an Alexandrian merchant of the second century, mentions the muslins of the Ganges, cloths of all sorts, colored shawls and sashes, purple goods, gold embroidery, lac, steel, jewels, perfumes and spices. How long this trade had been going on we cannot say. It was, however, encouraged by the Ptolemies, who established a port on the Red Sea and organized a system of conveyance by means of caravans to the Nile, and so to Alexandria. In this way Indian manufactures reached Europe, while the Persians were at the same time carrying on an extensive trade in the same materials. The Indians further contributed to the advance of commerce by becoming road-builders, and thus bringing the manufacturing places along the valley of the Ganges into connection with the Panjab in the north-west and with ports and trading-stations in the west and south. Thus, Egypt and Assyria were brought into commercial intercourse with the eastern tract of the valley of the Ganges--that lying between the modern Allahabad and Calcutta. That commerce spread in other directions there can be no doubt. Within three centuries of the foundation of Buddhism it had penetrated to Ceylon, and reached Tibet and China in the first century of our era. Let us look at one stupendous fact as indicative of international intercourse with India--namely, that Buddhism, which has all but disappeared from the land of its birth, is at the present moment the religion of about five hundred millions of human beings occupying the continent of Asia from the Caspian to the Pacific, from Tartary to China and Japan.

Leaving both religion and commerce aside--the latter of which might have been brought down to the opening of maritime intercourse between Europe and the far East by way of the Cape--there have yet to be taken into consideration the several invasions of India, which afford yet another possible explanation of the manner in which its arts may have been affected by contact with foreigners.

There were many schisms among the Buddhists between the sixth and third centuries before our era, but in power their community grew year by year. Asoka brought all Northern India under his power, and, becoming a good Buddhist, sent missionaries all over India from Cashmere to Ceylon. After his death India was for some centuries under the Indo-Scythians, until the fourth century of our era. From that time Buddhism declined rapidly. The Brahmans were ever its enemies, and toward the eighth century began to push northward from the retreats they had sought when Brahmanism, a thousand years before, had given way to Buddhism. About the same time began the Arab invasions which ultimately led to the establishment of Mohammedan rule. This was the beginning of about twelve hundred years of war. The Arabs came first in A.D. 664, and again in 711. The Turkomans entered the Panjab in 976, and the Afghan dynasties of Mahmud of Gazni and Mohammed of Ghor followed in the tenth and twelfth centuries. The third Afghan dynasty established its rule at Delhi in the thirteenth century. With this century we approach the conquests of Chingis Khan in Central Asia and of Hulaku Khan, and then in rapid succession came the Mohammedan incursions into the Dekkan and the Mongolian subjugation of India, which was begun in 1298, carried on by Tamerlane in 1398, and completed in 1526 by Sultan Baber. The Mogul period ended with the British conquests of 1803 and 1817.

If the rise and fall of these various tides of commerce and war are followed, it will be seen that not only has India not been an isolated country, but, on the contrary, through a hundred channels it has held communication with the world beyond the Himalayas. Its art has no doubt been affected by such intercourse. The effect of architectural forms upon the decorations made use of in industrial art has already been referred to; and when we find that the Buddhists acquired a knowledge of the use of stone in building from the Greeks and Persians, we at once see why Doctor Leitner's collection of fragments of sculpture from Peshawur in the north of the Panjab, and now in the museum, should be called Græco-Buddhistic. Indian architecture is based upon Greek, and the influence of the latter lasted so long that Mr. Fergusson, who has made a special study of Hindu temples, says that he could not find anywhere in Cashmere the slightest trace of the bracketed capital of the Hindus, but that the Doric or quasi-Doric column is found all along the valley in temples dating from the eighth to the twelfth century. Doctor Birdwood, again, has succeeded in tracing the inlaid woodwork or marquetry of India from Shiraz in Persia to Sindh, Bombay and Surat. Further, the mosaic-work of Agra is of Florentine extraction, having been introduced by Austin de Bordeaux in the seventeenth century, and recently revived.

Let these examples suffice to show that India did not originate all the arts it now practises. Unfortunately, all that has been borrowed by it has not been to its advantage--such as the Dutch black-wood carving at Bombay--and it is scarcely possible that Anglo-Indian art will add anything to the laurels won by the workmen of the same presidency. It is moreover to be feared that the machine-made dry goods of England, the French patterns of Cashmere, the introduction of machinery, the absorption of hand-weavers by factories, and, above all other things, the establishment of art-schools, may ultimately break down the barriers which for two thousand years and more have, in spite of war, commerce and the introduction of new arts, preserved in the work of the art-craftsmen of India an element essentially indigenous.

Many conservative agencies were no doubt at work in preserving to Indian art a distinctively national character. Amongst these the religious epics and the Code of Manu come first. Of the former, those already referred to, the _Ramayana_ and the _Mahabharata_, show what the art and life of the Hindus were between the fifth and the third centuries before Christ. The Code gave them a form which they preserve to-day in at least all essential respects. The arts have been handed down from father to son for countless generations, and traditional skill has reached its high perfection chiefly by the village-system of the Code. The centre of the political interest of the Hindu is his own village. In our sense of the word he has no country, but he has a village home, and his loyalty is absorbed by the administrators of that home's affairs. He is unmoved either by conquest or commerce. His life has crystallized into a certain form. It is the life his forefathers led, and it is the life his children will lead. His village is to all intents and purposes an independent community. This is the account of a traveller: "Outside the entrance, on an exposed rise of ground, the hereditary potter sits by his wheel moulding the swift-revolving clay by the natural curves of his hands. At the back of the houses which form the low irregular street there are two or three looms at work in blue and scarlet and gold, the frames hanging between the acacia trees, the yellow flowers of which drop fast on the webs as they are being woven. In the streets the brass- and copper-smiths are hammering away at their pots and pans; and farther down, in the veranda of the rich man's house, is the jeweller working rupees and gold mohrs into fair jewelry--gold and silver ear-rings and round tires like the moon, bracelets and nose-rings and tablets, and tinkling ornaments for the feet--taking his designs from the fruits and flowers around him or from the traditional forms represented in the paintings and carvings of the great temple which rises above the groves of mangoes and palms at the end of the street above the lotus-covered village-tank." By and by the work-day closes with feasting and music and the songs chosen from the religious epics. In the morning the same routine begins again: the same sounds are heard, the same sights seen, the same pleasures indulged in. It is the life of the Code and of the great epics--a happy, contented, frugal and, in a sense, cultured life, based upon a religion which gave it expression and form long before our era began, and fenced it in from the influences of external change. All its conquerors have succumbed to the social and religious life of India. They came and found themselves within a magic circle. All that they brought of art was Indianized. A new art meant nothing more than a new illustration of Hindu religion. We have seen the craftsmen at work, and the fountain of their inspiration is not far to seek when we are told that the stories of the _Ramayana_ and the _Mahabharata_ are told nightly all over India to listening millions. Let us suppose the village-festival is approaching its close. Then "a reverend Brahman steps upon the scene with the familiar bundle of inscribed palm-leaves in his hands, and, sitting down and opening them one by one upon his lap, slow and lowly begins his antique chant, and late into the starry night holds his hearers, young and old, spellbound by the story of the pure loves of Rama and Sita, or of Draupadi who too dearly loved the bright Arjuna, and the doom of the froward sons of Dhritarashtra."

Can we wonder, then, that from these legends of the heroic age are taken figures for the sculptor, scenes for the carver and the graver, and subjects for the jeweller and the worker in ivory? Religion is thus the greater conservator of Indian art as it appeared in its earlier forms, and reduces into conformity with it all that comes from abroad.

Further agencies toward the same end are the caste-system, in the large cities trade-guilds--or, as we would call them, trades unions--and, finally, hereditary offices in both village and city. Under the village-system artisans may be said to have undergone successive generations of training, and the result is that in a country where _manufacture_ means, literally, "making by hand," any object of industrial art represents the development of hereditary skill. His craftsmanship is the father's richest legacy to his son.

One point more deserves consideration. In America and Europe nearly everything is done by machinery: in India nearly everything is made by hand. Whatever is done, therefore, is the expression of a thought; and that art in the East is not trammelled by tradition may be inferred not less from the variety of its productions than from the Indianizing process to which foreign arts are subjected. The hand leaves almost unconsciously the impress of the workman's individuality. There is room there for patronage to lead to superexcellence. The saving of time and rapidity of output are not important objects when a prince lends his encouragement to art and his influence to its elevation. In the East--in China, in Persia and in India--artisans have worked directly under the imperial power. All that was asked of them was good work. In India offices of this kind were, in the imperial workshop as in the villages, hereditary; and without trouble about subsistence, without a thought of time, without limit in expense--without, in short, one disturbing element--the art-workers labored only for their art and for the approval of their king or chief. In the museum is a rug of silk woven by deft fingers which have for possibly three centuries been still. Four hundred knots occupy every square inch, and the size of the rug leads to the total of three and a half millions of knots, between every two of which the pattern demanded a change in the treadles of the loom. We turn from this to a bowl of jade beautifully engraved upon which were expended the labors of three generations of workers in the employ of the emperors of Delhi. It is in this way the best work of all kinds is produced to-day. Spinning, weaving and embroidering are, moreover, practised all over the country in the homes of the rich and in the dwellings of the poor. "Every house in India," says Doctor Birdwood, "is a nursery of the beautiful." The words are suggestive. They imply that correct taste is best formed by practice. We who have lectures on decorative art and technological schools live in too fast an age ever to rival the industrial art of India, and shall in our hurry do well if we arrive at something like an understanding appreciation of the works of the villagers of Hindostan.

The general attributes of Indian art as displayed in the museum are richness of decoration, great manipulative skill, good taste, brilliancy, harmony of color, intricacy of decorative forms, and the due subserviency of both color and design to decorative effect. Nearly all these qualities are illustrated by the textile fabrics, the dresses and turbans, the horse and elephant caparisons, the carpets and the rich canopies of the howdahs. These are the tissues that spread the fame of India on every side. It is not known how long it has possessed the art of weaving. Possibly it originated in the Valley of Roses or by the banks of the sacred Ganges. The weaving of silk India appears to have borrowed from China, but when or how it first wove silk we cannot tell, any more than we can tell when first it wove its marvellous gold brocades or gauzy muslins. It was weaving cotton in times beyond the realm of history, and continues weaving it to-day all over the Panjab, Sindh, Rajputana, Oudh, Bengal, the Central Provinces, in Assam, Bombay and Madras. The prince of Wales obtained a few pieces of the famous muslin of Dacca, requiring about six yards to weigh an ounce. Of this kind one was called _shabnam_, or "dew of the evening," because if laid upon the grass it became undistinguishable from the dew; another was called _bafthowa_, or "woven air;" a third was called _abrawan_, or "running water," because when placed in water it became invisible. Even the prince's pieces weigh nearly twice as much as the older tissues. Indian lace in gold or silver, cotton or silk, is in texture and design the highest representative of that most beautiful fabric. The brocades are glories of color and rich with glittering flowers of gold, and the embroidery on velvet, silk, wool or cotton is both pleasing and rich. The museum contains several examples of the gorgeous embroideries of the Dekkan, and we find in one or two of the costumes and some of the fans a beautiful embroidery of shining green beetle-wings and gold. As to the carpets, they are as a rule satisfying to the eye and possess a general simplicity of design blended with richness of color. In all the more brilliant textile fabrics of India warmth is secured without violence of contrast; and one fact it will be well for Western manufacturers to study--namely, that floral or animal decoration is invariably flat.

In furniture the Hindus do not follow the prevailing American rule: with them, the less furniture the better. There are, however, specimens from Bombay of their works upon forms supplied by Europe--as, for example, two sofas and a high-backed chair, the backs of which are so perforated that they seem as cool and light as cane. A sideboard from Bombay has its top and panels so perforated that one wonders how long a time it took to weave the endless flower-stems of the design and to carve the fruits and flowers and the griffin-like monsters that support the upper shelf. Some of the heavy, deep-cut flower-stands are less pleasing. On the other hand, a dark wood stand from Ahmedabad is carved in a fine, close and perforated pattern which is altogether appropriate and admirable. It seems to have been made in parts. The bottom or stand is solid and deeply cut in twining snakes and leaves: to this is fastened the lowest section, hollow and perforated in a floral design; above this is another of a different design; a third section supports the vase and cover, which are also perforated. The work throughout is elaborate and exquisite. A good deal of the furniture and many of the tables, trays and boxes or coffers are variously lacquered and colored, but when color is used lavishly it is never inharmonious. Ivory is frequently employed in conjunction with ebony, and the effect is often striking. The carving of ivory is practised in many parts of India, and the Berhampore stately state-barges with their rowers all in position, and the elephants with howdahs on their finely-modelled backs, are all that need be mentioned, though there are numberless objects that come from Bombay carved in low relief or perforated. Even after the small ivories and the larger chess-tables, cots and palanquins in which ivory is employed, the sandal-wood carving is amongst the most attractive in the museum. There is a model of a doorway from Ahmedabad cut after a microscopic pattern, and all around are designs, some mythological and others purely naturalistic. The low-relief foliated ornamentation of Bombay seems more attractive than the mythological designs of Canara and Mysore, or than the mixed foliated and mythological designs of Ahmedabad, possibly because the Western mind finds less to sympathize with in the figures of the Hindu Pantheon than in the exuberant wealth of India's gorgeous flowers and shady groves.

There are many carvings in horn and tortoise-shell from Vizagapatam and Belgaum; pots, vases, bowls and bottles in marble of various colors, solid, mottled and variegated; in soapstone, flowers, and notably a model of a tomb, in which the most minute details are reproduced; and specimens of the original Florentine inlaid marble-work of Agra. In the latter we find white marble inlaid after various designs with agate, chalcedony, topaz, jasper, garnet, lapis-lazuli, coral, crystal, carnelian, and even with pearls, turquoises, amethysts and sapphires. It demands judgment in the selection of the stones, skill in their handling and taste in their arrangement in order to be what may worthily be called artistic. It is ever too easy to perpetrate the grossest crimes against good taste in the richest materials, and it is the crowning glory of the industrial art of India that mere richness of effect is never sought at the expense of taste.

Lac is used in an endless variety of ways--from making lacquered walking-sticks, boxes, toys and bangles to bracelets and beads. The best work is found in house-decoration and furniture. In the case of some of the Sindh boxes the decorative design is worked out by covering the box with successive layers of variously-colored lacquer and then cutting away the pattern to the depth required by the color-treatment. Sometimes metal rings appear to be let into incisions, and again the decoration consists exclusively of surface-painting in bright colors. The latter is found upon the _papier-mâché_ of Cashmere, which ranks with the best lac-work of India.

We pass the pottery, merely noting the beauty of the colors, and especially of the turquoise-blue, and the graceful simplicity of some of the early forms, the trappings and caparisons, and glance round the magnificent collection of arms, from the rough robbers' clubs bound with serrated iron to the finest chain-mail and rifles inlaid with gold. From Sindh comes a flintlock gun having the barrel inlaid and plated with gold at the muzzle and breech, and bearing an inscription inlaid in gold. Round the muzzle are set nine uncut rubies, and an emerald forms the "sight." The stock is rosewood, curved and expanding at the butt, enriched with mounts of chased gold, and attached to the barrel by three perforated and chased gold bands. In some cases the woodwork is almost obscured by the gold ornaments. On all sides are weapons richly chased and damascened in gold. Weapons are there of the steel that Persia, and even Damascus, never equalled, and they come, as to a masquerade of the dread weapons of war, with handles of crystal, of jade set with rubies and emeralds, of gold and green enamel set all over with table diamonds, and sheathed in green velvet scabbards gleaming with diamonds and fitted with cap, band and chape of green-enamelled gold.

If this people carried such arms, what must their jewelry be? An answer is found in the museum. We again find jade set with emeralds and rubies. From Trichinopoly are gold chains of the snake pattern so finely wrought that the scales are almost invisible, and the chain doubles like thread, or chains and bracelets of rose open-work, most minute and beautiful. From Madras and Delhi comes granulated gold made into ear-drops or set as bosses in open-work. About everything there is a lightness as far removed as possible from Western ideas of handsome solidity and valuable weight. In the museum a model stands for the purpose of showing how the woman of India wears jewelry. She has not only "rings on her fingers and bells on her toes," but in nose and ears, on her hand, dropping over her bosom, round her arms and waist, and loading her ankles, are stringed gems and hoops of gold.

Akin to the jewelry is the gold and silver plate. The cup, or Buddhist relic-casket, already mentioned, is interesting as being one of the oldest examples found in India, and its age, about two thousand years, only tells how much India art-work in the precious metals has been destroyed or lost. There are many excellent examples of the parcel-gilt work of Cashmere, and one shrine-screen of silver, pierced and repoussée, is exceptionally fine in design and treatment. There are tinned brass vessels with incised decorations, sculptured vessels of brass, brass incrusted with copper and copper incrusted with silver, but which can be called the baser and which the richer metals when all assume shapes of such wondrous beauty as the _lotas_ and _sarais_, and are decorated with designs so pleasing and with a skill so perfect with damascened work, incrustations or enamel? The metal excipient is forgotten in the art. The enamelled huku-stand in the illustration belongs to the best Mogul period of transparent enamelling, and is painted in green and blue enamels. At Jaipur red, blue and green enamels are laid upon pure gold, and the richness and brilliancy of the result have raised the enamels of that place to the first rank among those of all the East.

Here our round of inspection may close, and as the doors shut behind us a remarkable fact presents itself: that in no branch of industrial art, either in metal-work, weaving or carving, can the science of Europe cope with the plodding industry of the East.

JENNIE J. YOUNG.

ADAM AND EVE.