446 MEMOIR OF A SURVEY OF 



we had with us, and astonishingly apt in understanding it. At their 

 desire, I opened the lock of my sextant box, and drew for them figures of 

 its various parts, from which they assured me they should be able to 

 imitate it. I also opened and explained to them the uses and connexion of 

 the separate pieces of a musical snuff box, which I intended for a present 

 to the Raja. They were highly delighted with it, but they expressed 

 their fear that they scarcely understood it well enough, upon so hasty an 

 explanation and inspection, to enable them, in my absence, to detect the 

 cause of derangement, should it get out of order. I also gave a pair of 

 Magnetic bars, which had excited their attention ; not more by their 

 property of giving direction to needles, than that of assisting in the 

 detection of iron ores, which I exhibited to them by driving off the sulphur 

 from some pyrites, the nature of which they had been ignorant of till then. 

 They expressed great delight when I showed them that sulphur, for 

 which they paid a very high price to petty Slngfo traders, could be readily 

 obtained, at small cost, in their own country. They immediately brought 

 me the Galena, from which the Khanungs, by a process which they kept 

 secret from them, procure the silver, and they asked me for an explanation 

 of this enigma, but it was too late to get cupels made, and I failed, from 

 exhaustion, in attempting to oxidate it with nitre ; before the blowpipe, 

 however, I gave them such instruction as I could. They promised to 

 manufacture a still, after my projected improvements, and as they are fond 

 of their whisky, I dare say they will. It is rather singular, that their 

 still resembles very closely the one described by Turner, as common in 

 B ho tan ; it consists of a boiler, cut out of the soap stone, with a cylinder of 

 the same material closely fitting on, and having iron bars at its bottom 

 to sustain a small China bason. The top of the cylinder is closed by 

 a concave dish of brass or copper, which is kept filled with cool water, 

 that the ascending vapour being condensed upon it may trickle down 

 towards the centre, and drop into the bason, which is placed there to 

 receive it. 



