1848.] and on its Coal and other Minerals. 525 



of alum, which is generally hollow in its interior, the gurrah inverted 

 and the uncrystallized alum liquor, should any remain, allowed to escape. 

 The gurrah is then broken and the alum moulded to the form of the 

 vessel, and removed to the depot for sale and exportation. 



By acting on successive portions of the kiln in the manner above 

 described, the whole is by degrees exhausted of the alum which it 

 contains. 



Quantity manufactured. — The average daily expenditure in all the 

 Alum works at Kalibag was stated to us to be only Us. 12, while the 

 amount of alum annually prepared is about 12,000 maunds, which at 

 Rs. 3 per maund, the price of the article at the manufactory, will yield 

 a return of Rs. 36,000 per annum. 



It is indeed singular that a process almost identical to that employed 

 in European alum works, should have been discovered and adopted by 

 the natives of India, and practised by them for several hundred years. 

 We could not ascertain how long alum has been manufactured at Kali- 

 bag, but the proprietor or Malik of the place, by name Ullah Yar Khan, 

 a remarkably obliging and intelligent old man, informed us that his 

 ancestors for eight generations had carried on the trade. 



Alkaline base of Alum. — We have stated that the substance from 

 which the alkali of the Kalibag alum is derived, is a brown salt called 

 Jumsan. This seems identical with the saline efflorescence so abundant 

 throughout the N. W. provinces, and particularly so in all the grass 

 jungles and waste ground in the neighbourhood of Lahore, and which is 

 chiefly composed of sulphate of soda, with a little common salt and a 

 trace of carbonate of soda giving it an alkaline reaction. 



For the supply of the alum manufactories the efflorescence is scraped 

 from the soil in the jungle E. of the Indus, and is particularly abundant 

 in the plain which skirts the S. side of the salt range at the villages of 

 Gurree and Tuttee, 8 or 9 miles from the Indus. The efflorescence is 

 denominated Kullur, and from it Jumsan is obtained by treating the 

 former with water and drying up the solution of its saline matter in gur- 

 rahs exposed to the sun. 



This on analysis turns out to be nothing but a mixture of sulphate 

 of soda and common salt, with varying proportions of carbonate of soda, 

 its quality depending chiefly on the amount of sulphate of soda which 

 it yields. 



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