1833.] Salt Works at Panchpadder. 365 
Il1.—Description of the Salt Works at Panchpadder, in Marwar, By 
Lieutenant A. Burnes, Bombay Army. 
At Panchpadder, in Mdrwdr, about six miles north of the river 
Suni, there are extensive salt works under the Jodhpur Government, 
yielding to it annually considerable revenue, in a cent. per cent. tax. 
The tract which furnishes the salt is a spacious saline plain, about 12 
miles long and six broad, commencing three or four miles west- 
ward of the town of Panchpadder, and hemmed in all other sides by the 
sand hills of the desert. 
In this space there are about seven hundred salterns, each of which 
is 200 feet long, by 60 broad, with a depth of 12 feet. Within this 
space the water, which is saline, rises from the soil to a height of four 
or five feet; and a jungle shrub, called Mardré, is carefully disposed 
in layers under and over it. To these the saline particles adhere and crys- 
tallize, and in the course of two years the whole depth of liquid becomes 
a mass ofsalt, the process of crystallization commencing from the bottom. 
The shrub which is so essential to this process is ofa grey or ashen. 
colour, and grows in abundance on the sand hills of the Thar or desert. 
It must possess certain properties to adapt it for the purpose. In ap- 
pearance it is like the Babiil with thorns, but no other shrub is so 
suited to the manufacture of salt as Mariri. Lawn, or laan, a 
low stunted bush, like evergreen, which is always to be found in salt 
and level plains, is sometimes used in its stead, but the salt is then of 
an inferior description. The natives say, that Mariirt is a salt plant : 
it does not appear so to the taste. The fact of Jawn serving 
however indifferently as a substitute for it, shews that it must be of a 
saline quality ; for that shrub when burnt yields abundance of alkali, and 
hever grows, but in soils impregnated with salt. The salt manufac- 
tured at Pokran, Phaléd, and Sambar, places in Marwar, is by a differ- 
ent process from what is here described, and I conclude that the 
use of the Muraré bush is peculiar to Panchpadder. The salt manufac- 
tured here is said to be ofa superior quality, and is exported to Malwa, 
Meywar, &c. 
The whole operation of the manufacture is tedious and expensive ; 
the price of the labour is high, from the unhealthy and disagreeable 
nature of the work. A saltern costs in digging from one to two thou- 
sand rupees, and only affords a return every third year, and each suc- 
cessive supply from it is of an inferior description. Of the seven hun- 
dred salterns, sixty or seventy might produce annually much more, 
but this supply satisfies thedemand. Each yields on an average 
about 3000 bullocks, or 8000 man of 40 sir, of the material. The sal- 
terns become unfit for use after thirty or forty repetitions of the process ; 
