ROUGHING IT IN SOUTHERN INDIA 163 



stretched till it was about three feet long, when the operator 

 stopped his pulling to ask if this were long enough, because 

 he could make it a mere thread if desired. It suited me 

 very well as it was, so there was nothing to do now but 

 attach the second hook, and my chain was before my eyes, 

 finished and without an inequality anywhere, so flawless 

 was the wire and so evenly was it drawn. 



That same system of payment by giving weight for 

 weight obtains in other things besides ornaments. For 

 example, the big copper cauldron used for boiling the gram 

 for the horses and bullocks gets battered and worn in the 

 course of service. One day a splendid new one appears, 

 and you are only asked to pay the difference in the weight 

 of the two according to the then market rate of copper per 

 seer, which, like other market rates, varies. Thus you get 

 ' new lamps for old ' quite to your satisfaction, and, depend 

 upon it, to that of the coppersmith also. 



For cooking-utensils copper is now to a great extent 

 superseded by enamel in European households in India, 

 but there are generally to be found, and used in preference 

 by the cook, some deep, handleless copper pans, which have 

 to undergo a process of tin-lining every few weeks, or when- 

 ever the copper begins to show through again. The Tamil 

 word for this re-lining is kalai-mg. The kalai-moxi knows 

 that before he is paid his work will be put to the rag test ; 

 that is to say, he will have to rub round the insides of the 

 pans with a bit of white rag, and if it becomes blackened 

 it proves that his tin was half lead. 



Wild mango trees flourished in The Wynad — groves and 

 avenues of them. We once took a journey in the blazing 

 hot weather along a road near Minnengadi where the travel- 

 ling was shady and delightful under their heavy foliage, a 

 journey that could not have been attempted in the open 

 — five miles of it, and every yard dim and cool. As to the 

 mangoes, it was the season for them ; they were dead ripe 



