Down in the vats below, the beating coolies are plashing, and shouting,
and yelling, or the revolving wheel (where machinery is used) is
scattering clouds of spray and foam in the blinding sunshine. The
firemen stripped to the waist, are feeding the furnaces with the dried
stems of last year's crop, which forms our only fuel. The smoke hovers
in volumes over the boiling-house. The pinmen are busy sorting their
pins, rolling hemp round them to make them fit the holes more exactly.
Inside the boiling-house, dimly discernible through the clouds of
stifling steam, the boilermen are seen with long rods, stirring slowly
the boiling mass of bubbling blue. The clank of the levers resounds
through the pressing-house, or the hoarse guttural 'hah, hah!' as the
huge lever is strained and pulled at by the press-house coolies. The
straining-table is being cleaned by the table 'mate' and his coolies,
while the washerman stamps on his sheets and press-cloths to extract
all the colour from them, and the cake-house boys run to and fro
between the cutting-table and the cake-house with batches of cakes on
their heads, borne on boards, like a baker taking his hot rolls from
the oven, or like a busy swarm of ants taking the spoil of the granary
to their forest haunt. Everywhere there is a confused jumble of sounds.
The plash of water, the clank of machinery, the creaking of wheels, the
roaring of the furnaces, mingle with the shouts, cries, and yells of
the excited coolies; the vituperations of the drivers as some terrified
or obstinate bullock plunges madly about; the objurgations of the
'mates' as some lazy fellow eases his stroke in the beating vats; the
cracking of whips as the bullocks tear round the circle where the
Persian wheel creaks and rumbles in the damp, dilapidated wheel-house;
the-dripping buckets revolving clumsily on the drum, the arriving and
departing carts; the clang of the anvil, as the blacksmith and his men
hammer away at some huge screw which has been bent; the hurrying crowds