70 Analyses of Books. [Jan. 



lization. The apparatus employed was curious from its simpli- 

 city and rudeness. A small stream of water was led from a 

 distance to the place by a pipe of bamboos ; the filters were of 

 matting, in the shape of square boxes, supported by sticks ; and 

 the evaporating vessels, and indeed all the vessels used, were 

 the common chatties of the country, of which a great many were 

 assembled of various sizes. The cave may be considered partly 

 natural, and partly artificial. 1 was informed that during the 

 last 50 years, for six months in the dry season, it has been 

 annually worked, and that each man employed was required to 

 furnish a load of nitre, which is about (JO pounds, to the royal 

 stores." 



Saltpetre. — The preparing of saltpetre, and the manufacture of 

 gunpowder, are arts which the Cingalese, for many years, have 

 constantly practised. The process of preparing the salt, in 

 different parts of the country, was very similar. When the salt 

 occurred impregnating the surface of the rock, as in the cave 

 near Memoora, the surface was chipped off with small strong 

 axes, and the chippings by pounding were reduced to a state of 

 powder. This powder, or the loose fine earth, which, in most of 

 the caves, contained the saline impregnation, was well mixed 

 with an equal quantity of wood-ash. The mixture was thrown 

 on a filter formed of matting, and washed with cold water. The 

 washings of the earth were collected in an earthen vessel, and 

 evaporated at a boiling temperature till concentrated to that 

 degree that a drop let fall on a leaf became a soft solid. The 

 concentrated solution was set aside, and when it had crystal- 

 lized the whole was put on a filter of mat. The mother- lye that 

 passed through, still rich in saltpetre, was added to a fresh 

 weak solution to be evaporated again ; and the crystals, After 

 having been examined, and freed from any other crystals of a 

 different form, were either immediately dried, or, if not suffi- 

 ciently pure, redissolved and crystallized afresh. The operations 

 just described were generally carried on at the nitre caves. In 

 the province of the tSeven Korles, besides extracting the salt at 

 the caves, the workmen brought a quantity of the earth to their 

 houses, where, keeping it under a shed protected from the wind 

 and rain, without any addition excepting a little wood-ash, they 

 obtain from it every third year a fresh quantity of salt. 



Gunpmvder. — In their mode of manufacturing gunpowder, 

 which is very generally understood, there is not the least refine- 

 ment. To proportion the constituent parts, scales are used, but 

 not v»' eights. The proportions commonly employed are five ])arts 

 of saltpetre, and one of each of the other ingredients of sulphur 

 and charcoal. The charcoal preferred is made of the wood of 

 the parwatta tree. The ingredients moistened with very weak 

 lime water, and a little of the acrid juice of the wild yam, are 

 ground together between two fiat stones, or pounded in a rice 

 mortar. After the grinding or pounding is completed, the moist 



