TIN MINING IN PERAK. 85 



Messrs. Aylesbury and Bamforth next put up six -inch pipes 

 at Bruseh, in Bataug Padang, in the year 1895. A short shiice 

 of about a hundred and fifty feet was at first employed, but 

 it gave the most unsatisfactory results. In the year 1896 experi- 

 ments were begun with the view of improving the working of the 

 sluices, and by July the form which wiU now be described had 

 been evolved. 



The water is brought from a stream called the Sungei Grepai 

 by means of a long ditch cut out on the face of the hill, with 

 wooden flumes to carry it across the ravines and over those 

 places where the hillside is too steep to allow of a ditch being 

 dug. There are four miles of open ditching, and over three 

 thousand feet of flumes. Both ditch and fluming are variously 

 graded, depending on the nature of the soil passed over, and 

 capable of supplying water sufiicient to keep three monitors 

 at work using six -inch piping with a fall of two hundred and 

 fifty feet At the end of the ditch is the intake box. This 

 is simply a wooden tank, fitted with a grating to catch and 

 prevent leaves, sticks and other things from entering the pipes 

 with the water. There are water gates between the intake 

 box and the ditch, and also an overflow to allow the surplus 

 water to escape without doing damage to the plant. The pipes 

 enter the lower part of the intake box, and are then simply laid 

 on the surface of the hillside down to the monitor. The pipes 

 are of riveted steel plates, slightly larger at one end than the 

 other so as to allow of the smaller end of one fitting into the 

 larger end of the next. They are eight hundred feet in length, 

 and the head of water is two hundred and thirty feet, that 

 is to say the vertical height from the working face to the intake 

 box is that distance. There are valves at the intake box, and 

 also near the monitor, so as to be able to control the supply 

 of water or to shut it off entirely. The monitor is of the usual 

 type, with nothing particular about it. It is a stout conical 

 steel tube mounted at its larger end on an universal joint, so 

 that the operator can turn it about with ease in any direction. 

 At the narrow end there is a screw into which different sized 

 nozzles can l)e fixed, and within the conical tiil)e there are four 

 straight flat ribs of iron projecting from the sides towards 

 the centre. These are to give the water a straight course within 

 the delivery tube of the monitor, so that as it issues from the 

 nozzle it will maintain a rectilinear direction. Without these 

 ribs the water would have a tendency to move in curved lines, 

 varying with the changing position of the monitor tube in 

 relation to the pipe line. These irregularities in the direction of 

 the water of the jet cause it tt> break up into spray as soon 

 as it leaves the nozzle and much diminish the striking power 



