The descendants of the master workmen educated under this policy are still living and following the trades of their ancestors in Delhi, and there may be found the finest gold and silver cloth and the most elaborate embroidery produced in the world.  The coronation robe of Queen Alexandra of England, which is said to have been of surpassing richness and beauty, was woven and embroidered in a factory upon the Chandni Chauk, and the merchant who made it is constantly receiving orders from the different courts of Europe and from the leading dressmakers of London, Paris and Vienna.  He told us that Mrs. Leland Stanford had commissioned him to furnish the museum of her university in California the finest possible samples of different styles of Indian embroidery, and his workmen were then engaged in producing them.  Her contract, he said, amounted to more than $60,000.  Lady Curzon is his best customer, for she not only orders all of the material for her state gowns from him, but has brought him enough orders from the ladies of the British court to keep his shop busy for five years.  He told us that Lady Curzon designed the coronation robe of Queen Alexandra; he declared that she had the rarest taste of any woman he knew, and that she was the best dressed woman in the world—­an opinion shared by other good judges.

[Illustration:  A corner in Dehli]

He spread upon the floor wonderful samples of the skill and taste of his artists, brocades embroidered with jewels for the ceremonial robes of native princes; silks and satins whose surface was concealed by patterns wrought in gold and silver thread.  And everything is done by men.  Women do not embroider in India.  He keeps eighty men embroiderers constantly employed, and pays them an average of 18 cents a day.  The most famous of his artists, those who design as well as execute the delicate and costly garnishings, the men who made the coronation robe of the British queen, receive the munificent compensation of 42 cents a day.  That is the maximum paid for such work.  Apprentices who do the filling in and coarser work and have not yet acquired sufficient skill and experience to undertake more important tasks are paid 8 cents a day and work twelve hours for that.

Delhi is the principal distributing point for the famous Cashmere shawls which are woven of the hair of camels, goats and sheep in the province of Cashmere, which lies to the northward about 300 miles.  They are brought packed in panniers on the backs of camels.  I was told at Delhi that the foreign demand for Cashmere shawls has almost entirely ceased, that a very few are shipped from India nowadays because in Europe and America they are no longer fashionable.  Hence prices have gone down, the weavers are dependent almost entirely upon the local market of India, and one can obtain good shawls for very low prices—­about half what they formerly cost.