SUGAR. 



156 



remaining third being cylindrical, with a hemispherical projection at 

 the bottom, like the lower part of a common beer bottle. A forked 

 branch of a tree is worked down, Kobinson Crusoe-like, to a beam 

 or plank some 4 or 6 inches in thickness, and varying from near 

 18 inches in breadth at the single end to less than a foot at the 

 forked ends, when, by-the-way, it has much the appearance of a 

 monster boot-jack. This beam is placed horizontally with the hollow 

 against the mortar, and the bullock-driver sits on the undivided end 

 to which the cattle are attached, while the beam turns round the 

 mortar like a screw-key which if too large would slip round a nut. 

 The pestle is a piece of hard wood of the usual form, which is pressed 

 down by a beam, one end of which is attached either directly over or 

 near above the undivided end of the lower beam. There is a hollow 

 on the under side of this upper beam immediately over the mortar, in 

 which rests the top of the pestle, the other extremity being pulled 

 downwards by cords attached to the forked ends. By tightening or 

 slackening these cords, the upper beam acts as a regulating lever to 

 give the pestle more or less force. The whole arrangement, when at 

 rest, has very much the appearance of a huge lime-squeezer. 



The transition from the arrangement last described to the vertical 

 wooden roller mill now in use at Chica Ballapura, and in other parts 

 of India, was but natural. We find in this mill the same idea of a 

 lever pressing upon the top of the pestle applied to another purpose, 

 in the beam which is fixed to the top of the longer of the two rollers 

 which projects above the framework in which they are placed. The 

 other roller, which is only the height of the frame, is turned by the 

 four spiral grooves and ridges at the upper end being jammed against 

 corresponding grooves and ridges on the long roller. The transmis- 

 sion of motion by means of the cog-wheels of modern times is thus 

 seen to have had its origin, probably many centuries before the 

 Christian era, among the ancient inhabitants of India. * 



To place two such cylinders of hard wood in a frame, horizontally 

 instead of vertically, so that they could be turned by two men, one at 

 each end, and could be easily moved from place to place, was the 

 simplest way of meeting the requirements of those who had but little 

 cane to squeeze. Its cheapness, however (it can be made for two rupees, 

 ds.), was probably the greatest inducement to its adoption. Such 

 mills are in common use near Calcutta. They are almost universally 

 employed by the Chinese, amongst whom they are conveyed from 

 place to place, along the rivers and canals in the sugar districts, by 

 migratory sugar boilers. Being temporarily erected in some central 

 spot, where the produce of several farms can be conveniently brought, 



* See Reports from the officers of the East India Company on the cultivation of 

 sugar-cane in Hindostan. Dr. Roxburgh, Mr. Touchet, Mr. Cardin, Mr. Peddington, 

 Dr. Teunant, Mr. Prinsep, Captain Sleeman, Dr. Wallich, Dr. Buchanan, Mr. Haines, 

 Mr. G. H. Smith, and others, ' Asiatic Society's Journal,' ' Transactions of the Agri- 

 Horticultural Society,' and Parliamentary Report from the select committee appointed 

 to inquire into the matter contained in the petition of the East India Company, com- 

 plaining of the imposition of duties on East India produce. A woodcut of each of these 

 three kinds of mills may be found in Ure's ' Dictionary of Ai'ts, Manufactures, and 

 Mines,' sixth edition, vol. iii. ; and of the two last in ' Chambers's Encyclopaedia,' 

 vol. viii. 



