1832.] Native Manufacture of Steel in Southern India. 247 



however, is moderately compact and of a brilliant white fracture. 

 Occasionally it contains some ingredient which spoils the steel, render- 

 ing it excessively brittle : the natives assert that the adulteration 

 is copper, but it is more probably arsenic. The mixture being put into 

 the crucible, the fire is excited and kept up for 24 hours. Itis then allowed 

 to subside, arid the crucible is taken out and placed on the ground to 

 cool. When quite cold it is opened, and a cake of steel of great hardness 

 is found, weighing- on an average about a pound and a half. The cake 

 is covered with clay, and annealed in the furnace for 12 or 16 hours. 

 It is then taken out and cooled, and again annealed, and this may be 

 repeated a third or fourth time until the metal is rendered sufficient- 

 ly soft to be worked. The steel is known by the name of tVootz in 

 Telinga, and a Kurs^ a cake of about 1 10 rupees weight, is sold on the 

 spot for 8 annas. The daily produce of a furnaGe is about 50 seers, or in 

 value 37 rupees. The cost of this steel is much enhanced by the exaction 

 of the jaghirdar y who not unfrequently appropriates the advance to 

 himself, and leaves the purchaser still to incur the whole expence. 



The export, however, of the metal to Persia must be profitable, as it is 

 sufficient to bring dealers from that country and to defray the cost and 

 risk of travelling. We found at the village, in 1820, Haji Hosyn, from 

 Ispahan, engaged in the speculation ; and it must have answered his 

 purpose, as he was here again in 1823, having returned in the interval 

 to Persia and disposed of the venture. He informed us that the place 

 and the process are both familiar to the Persians, and that they have 

 attempted to imitate the latter without success. Besides residing at the 

 village, whilst making his purchases, he bore a personal part in the 

 operation, weighing the proportions of the iron, and testing the 

 toughness of the steel himself. 



The following experiments may convey some notion of the degree of 

 heat to which these furnaces can be raised, and which may be reckon- 

 ed at 130° of Wedgwood. 25 rupees weight of steel, which had not 

 been submitted to the last operation, with T ~th of a silver rupee, 

 was fused in three hours into a button of hard steel. A piece of 

 shelly stratum from Jhirpa fused into a sort of porcelain. A piece of 

 hornblende schist was fused into a glass, with many (globules of iron 

 and manganese floating on the surface. The granite from the bed of 

 the Godaveri yielded a green glass. Belkonda granite was partly run 

 into a green glass with pieces of quartz little altered, floating on the 

 mass. Sitabaldi basalt was melted into a yellowish green, and Jhirpa 

 wacken into a very perfect opaque black glass. 



