488 Roree in Khypoor. [No. 114. 



in a common stone hand mill and mixes one part flour with sixteen of 

 water. Cloth impregnated with this fluid acquires a yellowish hue, and 

 the immersion is repeated before it is consigned to the colouring vat. 



Black spots are left on a white ground of cloth by applying to these 

 points a paste, composed of acetate of iron, gum (cheer ), and fuller's earth. 

 The dyer forms the acetate from old nails or any rusty iron which he throws 

 into an earthen pot with wheat starch and water, in the proportion of one 

 of iron, two of water, and one fifth wheat starch, and exposes it in the 

 sun four days in summer, and eight in winter as the iron is then longer 

 dissolving. The stuff" is transferred to another vessel and fullers' earth 

 melted with it in no fixed proportion until it becomes a thick paste, and 

 to every five seers he adds an ana's* weight of gum. 



The dyer pours the stuff into a shallow box of baked clay, glazed inside 

 and out, and measuring eight inches square and three inches deep. A 

 frame five inches square formed of twelve small bars of sirkee reed, bound 

 together at the ends by transverse wooden bars and twine, is set on the 

 paste, and over it a piece of coarse wool on which the dyer presses the block 

 to avoid taking a superabundance of the stuff which would happen if he 

 plunged the block directly into it. The dyer had twenty blocks or en- 

 gravings in relief, of different designs, made at Shikarpore of tamarisk 

 and tamarind wood, and measuring four and five inches each way. The 

 stuff which accumulates from time to time in the engravings, is removed 

 at intervals by small brushes made of boar's bristles. 



Madder (munjeeth) is the dye stuff used for producing red colour, 

 and the best kind sells at 2;| seers per rupee ; it is not a product of 

 Khyrpoor and imported from Khorasan and India, and through the 

 sea port of Korachee. The stuff is obtained by boiling one part madder 

 in thirty parts water in a copper vessel, till the colour is thoroughly 

 extracted from the root, which takes about four hours. The 

 root is then withdrawn from the pot and thrown away. Eight pieces 

 of cloth each 24 cubits long and 1 cubit wide, are sometimes dyed at 

 once, and boiled two hours in four seers of madder. The cloth is taken 

 from the colouring bath to a* river, and beaten on a plank cut in furrows, 

 like the one used by washermen, to deprive it of superficial colouring 

 maker. It is rubbed an hour with cowdung and left all night to dry, 

 and in the morning washed again in the river in the manner noticed, and 

 spread in the sun to dry. The dyer renders the colouring matter a more 

 decided red by mixing khar (alkali, with water,) and sprinkles it upon the 



* An ana is a Sind weight equal to 6 Shorabee rupees, 



