CULTURE AND MANUFACTURE OF JUTE. 249 
it round his head he dashes it repeatedly against the surface of the water, 
drawing it through towards him, so as to wash off the impurities; then, 
with a dexterous throw he fans it out on the surface of the water, and 
carefully picks off all remaining black spots. It is now wrung out so as to 
remove as much water as possible, and then hung up on lines prepared on 
the spot, to dry in the sun. 
Jute is never so beautiful as at the first moment of its preparation ; for 
such is its proneness to decay—a true eremacausis of Liebig—that it changes 
colour from day to day, gradually descending from the beautiful pearly white, 
through shades of fawn colour and brown, with proportionate loss of strength. 
These changes, also, are occasioned or accelerated by causes which hardly 
affect other fibres; hence, one of the difficulties of bleaching, and the ten- 
dency to become brown, of all fabrics consisting of this material. That por- 
tion of the hank of fibre next the root, or where it has been held in the hand, 
being always more or less contaminated with bark and impurities, is cut off for 
about nine inches. These ends are sold to the paper-makers, and for mixing 
and making up various thick, coarse fabrics, of which whole cargoes, 
amounting to tens of thousands of pieces, are now annually taken off by the 
Americans from Calcutta, for cotton bagging and similar purposes, torming 
an entirely new trade.} 
But the great trade and principal employ of Jute is for the manufacture 
of Gunny chuts or chuttees, z.e., lengths suitable for making bags. This 
industry forms the grand domestic manufacture of all the populous eastern 
districts of Lower Bengal. It pervades all classes, and penetrates into every 
household. Men, women, and children find occupation therein. Boatmen 
in their spare moments, husbandmen, palankeen-carriers, and domestic 
servants; everybody in fact, being Hindoos—for Mussulmans spin cotton 
only—pass their leisure moments, distaff in hand, spinning Gunny twist. 
Its preparation, together with the weaving into lengths, forms the never- 
failing resource of that most humble, patient, and despised of created beings 
—the Hindoo widow—saved by law from the pile, but condemned by 
opinion and custom for the remainder of her days, literally to sackcloth and 
ashes, and the lowest domestic drudgery in the very household where once, 
perhaps, her will was law. This manufacture spares her from being a 
charge on her family—she can always earn her bread.—Amongst these 
causes will be discerned the very low prices at which Gunny manufactures 
are produced in Bengal, and which have attracted the demand of the whole 
commercial world. There is, perhaps, no other article so universally 
diffused over the globe as the Indian Gunny bag. All the finer and long- 
stapled Jute is reserved for the export trade, in which it bears a compara- 
tively high price. The short staple serves for the local manufactures, and 
it may be remarked, that a given weight of Gunny bags may be purchased 
at about the same price as a similar weight of raw material—leaving no 
apparent margin for spinning and weaving. . 
The stems or stalks of the Jute crop are of almost equal value with the 
fibrous portion. They are beautiful white and straight stems, of a light, 
brittle wood, somewhat like willow switches, and have a multitude of uses 
amongst the natives, such as for the manufacture of charcoal for gunpowder 
and fireworks, for the formation of fences and enclosures, for pea and 
similar cultivation, and for the construction of those acres of basket-work 
which the traveller may remark near every native village. These are the 
enclosures in which the betel-pepper vine is cultivated, the leaf of which is 
! The manufacture of Jute whiskey from these ends was tried experimentally, by 
subjecting them to the process of conversion into sugar with sulphuric acid, and 
afterwards fermenting. The produce had much resemblance to grain whiskey. 
