12 PEELIMINARY NOTICE ON THE 



beginning to end, carried on in the rudest way, and is, here as elsewhere, 

 pursued only by a particular caste of the people, who always appear to 

 be among the poorest and most wretched of the inhabitants. Not that 

 the profits of the manufacture are, in reality, so small as to be insuffi- 

 cient to yield them a better livelihood, but that their poverty and impro- 

 vident habits, coupled with a certain degree of uncertainty in the 

 returns for their labor, drive them into the hands of mahajuns (chiefly 

 Bengalis), who, by a system of advances, and by payments in kind, 

 become proprietors of the furnaces and also proprietors of the fuel. 

 Although not nominally, in reality this " truck system," which is of the 



most iniquitous kind, reduces the poor workman to 

 Poverty of workmen. 



perfect slavery, until at last he finds it impossible 



to obtain even a starvation allowance of food of the coarsest kind with- 

 out the aid of these mahajuns. From these causes it is, that wherever 

 seen, these iron-working villages are the most wretched looking in the 

 whole country. They are in all cases distinct from the other villages, 

 and at once bespeak the poverty of the inhabitants by the squalor and 

 filth of their abodes. Seldom do they attain any size; in some cases, 

 a single house marks the site of these " iron-works" ; in others some 

 half-dozen are grouped together. 



The wasteful consumption of fuel often compels them to remove to spots 

 Constant changes of "^^^^^ i* i^ ^^ore abundant, and nothing remains 

 resi ence. ^^ mark the former site of their workings, except- 



ing the huge heaps of slag so frequently met. with in the jungles. 



This description is applicable to all the jungle districts which I have 

 ^ . . ,. ,, seen, where the manufacture of iron is carried on 



Description applicable 



to most iron-yielding in this rude Way. In reality, the processes adopted 

 vary in very trifling respects, whether on the 

 banks of the Nerbudda, near the Western bounds of the Peninsula; 

 in the wild jungles of Central India ; in the districts of the South- 

 West Frontier ; in Birbhoom ; or in Cuttack. The form of the furnaces 



