Feb. 1, 1865.] THE TECHNOLOGIST. 



THE TECHNOLOGIST, 



A VISIT TO THE COSSIPORE SUGAR WORKS, BENGAL. 



The Cossipore Sugar Works occupy much the same position in a map 

 of Calcutta that Chelsea Hospital does in a map of London, except that, 

 in the Oriental city, the river runs north and south instead of east and 

 west, while the fashionable quarter of the town lies, not " up-river," but, 

 as we should term it, " below bridge." 



A considerable interval, both of time and labour, separates the sweet 

 juice of the cane or the date-palm from the beautiful crystals with 

 which a European lady mitigates the acrid flavour of her coffee. Let 

 us describe, as briefly as possible, a few of the intermediate processes. 



The Cossipore Company do not begin at the very beginning ; they 

 purchase their raw material already partially refined. It does not pay 

 in India to use elaborate appliances for the earlier stages of sugar- 

 making. The plan has been repeatedly tried, and always with ill-success — 

 a fact which may be proved by the heaps of neglected machinery which 

 lie rusting and rotting in the steamy atmosphere all over Lower Bengal. 

 Machinery cannot, at this stage, compete with the rude yet serviceable 

 method of the native labourer. 



In the early part of the cold season (say about the month of Novem- 

 ber) every date-palm tree has a man clinging to it, monkey-fashion. He 

 hangs one or more earthen jars round the trunk, makes an incision above 

 the jar, and inserts a little bamboo tube into the wound. Next morning 

 the jars are full of juice, and an evening or two later, while wandering 

 about the outskirts of a village, you may come suddenly on a blazing 

 fire of logs in a jungle-clearing, round which fire half a dozen swarthy, 

 half-naked figures are seen squatting, or engaged in stirring the contents i >f 

 a number of large earthen pots. The scene is weird and picturesque, 

 and you think of the witches in " Macbeth," but, in reality, a very prosaic 

 process is going on — the native growers are boiling their sugar. When 

 the syrup has attained a certain thickness, it is poured into wicker 

 baskets lined with a peculiar species of clay, set in large saucers. In 

 vol. v. L l 



