946 0)1 the Salts, called Puckwah and Phool-Kharee. [No. 120. 



facture for making and refining the Nitre, with the products of it 

 and of the Culinary Salt, 14 maunds of Saltpetre and 14 maunds of 

 Puckwah. We shall afterwards see this singularly confirmed. 



4. He again, in vol. ii. p. 280, when speaking of the manufacture of 

 the Company's Nitre in Bhaugulpore, says, that " there is a concealed 

 source of profit to the contractors," which he promises afterwards to 

 mention, but he has not done so, or Mr. Martin's mutilated edition 

 omits it. No doubt this is the production and sale of Puckwah ; for, 



5. In vol. iii. p. 332, (Puraniya.) he says, that when the Company's 

 advances for Nitre were withdrawn, their monopoly rendering the 

 private manufacturing of it illegal, the Beldars, * Salt-makers,' betook 

 themselves to the manufacture of Culinary Salt " from a saline earth 

 found in many parts of the district." A small per centage would not 

 have repaid them, and it is clear that it was no new trade to them as 

 Saltpetre-makers. 



6. Again, at p. 334, he says, that a Native agent of the Company as- 

 sured him, and that some of the Beldars confessed, that they made Bel- 

 dari Nemuck, (the same as the Puckwah,) from a thick brine called 

 Jarathi, which subsides in making of their (crude) Saltpetre, which 

 last is of course the same as the Dooah. 



7. At p. 337, he relates the process for making the Beldari Nemuckf 

 which is in fact Puckwah. 



8. Dr. Buchanan, however, was evidently no chemist, and of ques- 

 tions like these only a chemist can understand the true bearings. 

 Mr. Stephenson, who was a manufacturing chemist, and sent out by the 

 Hon'ble Company, has left us still the best data. He says, p. 8, that he 

 collected the saline soils from various part of Tirhoot to make an aver- 

 age ; and he found by analysis that the Nitrates* formed 1.6 per cent, 

 while the Muriate of Soda formed 1.4 per cent. Here we have a 

 direct proof, though from another zillah, that Dr. Buchanan's apparent- 

 ly exaggerated statement, [p. 7, ] that as much Culinary Salt as Salt- 

 petre is made, may, in some parts at least, be no exaggeration ! 



9. Mr. Stephenson again shews us, by direct experiment, (Pamphlet, 



p. 84,) that in the making of Cootiah Saltpetre, or Saltpetre made from 



the earths preserved in factories, which is far richer in Nitre than that 



* Of Potass and Lime, the first is Saltpetre, and the last becomes so as soon as it 

 meets with potass, from ashes or vegetable remains, in the Saltpetre heaps. 



