EOOTAN. 
99 
kept the owner always in good humour; and his wife, when he was 
not at home, would readily attend, and help us to the best fruit. It 
contained also apples, pears, and walnuts; but the latter were not 
ripe during our stay, and the former were extremely harsh and 
coarse. 
In our perambulations down the valley, I often rested at the place 
where the chief manufacture of paper is established, which was made, 
I found, by a very easy and unexpensive process, of the bark of a tree, 
here called Deali, which grows in great abundance upon the moun¬ 
tains near Tassisudon, but is not produced on those immediately 
bordering on Bengal. The method of preparing this material, as well 
as I could learn, is as follows. When a sufficient quantity of bark is 
collected to employ the labourer, it is divided into small shreds, and 
steeped and boiled in a lixivium of wood ashes; it is then taken up, 
and laid in a heap to drain; after which it is beaten upon a stone, with 
a wooden mallet, until it is reduced to an impalpable pulp ; it is then 
thrown into a reservoir of water, where, being well stirred about, and 
cleansed from the coarse and dirty part, which floats upon the surface, 
it is still further depurated in another large reservoir of clean water. 
When the preparation is complete, the parts are finely broken, and that 
which sinks in the water, appears mucilaginous to the touch. All that 
now remains is to form it into sheets, which is done upon small feeds 
set in frames. The labourer dips the frame in the water, and raises up 
a quantity of the pulp, which, by moving the frame in the water, he 
spreads, until it entirely and equally covers the surface of the reeds; 
he then raises the frame perpendicularly, the water drains off, and the 
O 
