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Upon the whole, though it be a strange spectacle, and a revolting, to see the judge urging the unhappy prisoner, with threats, abuse, and whipping, "to confess and be hanged;" yet it is clearly true, that whippings and hard words are light in the balance, compared with hanging.

A capital felon, therefore, will seldom indeed be thus driven to confess a crime he has not committed, when he is sustained and aided by all those favourable circumstances, in the constitution of the tribunal, and in the forms of procedure already enumerated. Nor should it be forgotten, that if much rigour is sometimes used to procure a confession, the confession itself is most usually superfluous to justice; and is sought rather to satisfy a scruple of conscience, than as a substitute for deficient evidence.

SECTION XIII

ON THE NATIVE METHOD OF MAKING THE PAPER, DENOMINATED IN HINDUSTAN, NEPÁLESE.

FOR the manufacture of the Népálese paper, the following implements are necessary, but a very rude construction of them

suffices for the end in view :

1st. A stone mortar, of shallow and wide cavity, or a large block of stone, slightly but smoothly excavated.

2d. A mallet or pestle of hard wood, such as oak, and size proportioned to the mortar, and to the quantity of boiled rind of the paper plant which it is desired to pound into pulp.

3d. A basket of close wicker work, to put the ashes in, and through which water will pass, only drop by drop.

4th. An earthen vessel or receiver, to receive the juice of the ashes after they have been watered.

5th. A metallic open-mouthed pot, to boil the rind of the plant in. It may be of iron, or copper, or brass, indifferently; an earthen one would hardly bear the requisite degree of fire.

6th. A sieve, the reticulation of the bottom of which is wide and open, so as to let all the pulp pass through it, save only the lumpy parts of it.

7th. A frame, with stout wooden sides, so that it will float well in water, and with a bottom of cloth, only so porous, that the meshes of it will stay all the pulp, even when dilated and diffused in water; but will let the water pass off, when the frame is raised out of the cistern; the operator must also have the command of a cistern of clear water, plenty of fire-wood, ashes of oak (though I fancy other ashes might answer as well), a fire-place, however rude, and lastly, a sufficient quantity of slips of the inner bark of the paper tree, such as is peeled off

the plant by the paper-makers, who commonly use the peelings when fresh from the plant; but that is not indispensable. With these "appliances and means to boot," suppose you take four seers of ashes of oak; put them into the basket above mentioned, place the earthen receiver or vessel beneath the basket, and then gradually pour five seers of clear water upon the ashes, and let the water drip slowly through the ashes, and fall into the receiver. This juice of ashes must be strong, or a dark-like red colour, and in quantity about two lbs., and if the first filtering yield not such a produce, pass the juice through the ashes a second time. Next, pour this extract of ashes into the metal pot, already described, and boil the extract; and so soon as it begins to boil, throw into it as many slips or peelings of the inner bark of the paper plant as you can easily grasp; each slip being about a cubit long, and an inch wide (in fact, the quantity of the slips of bark should be to the quantity of juice of ashes, such that the former shall float freely in the latter, and that the juice shall not be absorbed and evaporated with less than half an hour's boiling). Boil the slips for about half an hour, at the expiration of which time the juice will be nearly absorbed, and the slips quite soft. Then take the softened slips and put them into the stone mortar, and beat them with the oaken mallet, till they are reduced to a homogeneous or uniform pulp, like so much dough. Take this pulp, put it into any widemouthed vessel, add a little pure water to it, and churn it with a wooden instrument, like a chocolate mill, for ten minutes, or until it lose all stringiness, and will spread itself out, when shaken about under water. Next, take as much of this prepared pulp as will cover your paper frame (with a thicker or thinner coat, according to the strength of the paper you need), toss it into such a sieve as I have described, and lay the sieve upon the paper frame, and let both sieve and frame float in the cistern: agitate them, and the pulp will spread itself over the sieve; the grosser and knotty parts of the pulp will remain in the sieve, but all the rest of it will ooze through into the frame. Then put away the sieve, and taking the frame in your left hand, as it floats on the water, and pulp smartly with your right hand, and the pulp will readily diffuse itself in an uniform manner over the bottom of the frame. When it is thus pro

perly diffused, raise the frame out of the water, easing off the water in such a manner, that the uniformity of the pulp spread shall continue after the frame is clear of the water and the paper is made.

To dry it, the frame is set endwise, near a large fire; and so soon as it is dry, the sheet is peeled off the bottom of the frame and folded up. When (which seldom is the case) it is deemed needful to smooth and polish the surface of the paper, the dry sheets are laid on wooden boards and rubbed, with the convex entire side of the conch-shell; or in case of the sheets of paper being large, with the flat surface of a large rubber of hard and smooth grained wood; no sort of size is ever needed or applied, to prevent the ink from running. It would, probably, surprise the paper-makers of England, to hear that the Kachar Bhoteahs can make up this paper into fine smooth sheets of several yards square. This paper may be purchased at Káthmándú in almost any quantity, at the price of 17 annas sicca per dharni of three seers; and the bricks of dried pulp may be had* at the same place, for from 8 to 10 annas sicca per dharni. Though called Népálese, the paper is not in fact made in Népál proper. It is manufactured exclusively in Cis-Himálayan Bhote, and by the race of Bhoteahs, denominated, in their own tongue, Rangbo, in contradistinction to the Trans-Himálayan Bhoteahs, whose vernacular name is Sokhpo.t The Rangbo or Cis-Himalayan Bhoteahs are divided into several tribes (such as Múrmi, Lapcha, &c., &c.), who do not generally intermarry, and who speak dialects of the Bhote or Tibet language so diverse, that ignorant as they are, several of them cannot effectually communicate together. They are all somewhat ruder, darker, and smaller than the Sokhpos or Trans-Himálayan Bhoteahs, by whom they are all alike held in slight esteem, though most evidently essentially one and the same with themselves in race and in language, as well as in religion.

The pulp is dried and made up into the shape of bricks or tiles, for the convenience of transport. In this form it is admirably adapted for transmission to England. See the P.S.

+ The Néwár language has terms precisely equivalent to these. The Rangbo being called in Néwári, Paloo Sen; and the Sokhpo here spoken of is not really a different being from the Soghpoun nomade, the name ordinarily applied in Bhote to the Mongols. But this word has, at least, a different sense in the mouths of the Tibetans, towards this frontier, on both sides of the snows.

To return to our paper-making,-most of the Cis-Himalayan Bhoteahs, east of the Kali river, make the Népálese paper; but the greatest part of it is manufactured in the tract above Népál proper, and the best market for it is afforded by the Népalese people; hence probably it derived its name: a great quantity is annually made and exported southwards, to Népál and Hindustan, and northwards, to Sokya-Gumba, Digarchi, and other places in Tramontane Bhote. The manufactories are mere sheds, established in the midst of the immense forest of CisHimalayan Bhote, which affords to the paper-makers an inexhaustible supply, on the very spot, of the firewood and ashes, which they consume so largely; abundance of clear water (another requisite) is likewise procurable everywhere in the same region. I cannot learn by whom or when the valuable properties of the paper plant were discovered; but the Népalese say that any of their books now existent, which is made of Palmira leaves, may be safely pronounced, on that account, to be 500 years old: whence we may, perhaps, infer that the paper manufacture was founded about that time. I conjecture that the art of paper-making was got by the Cis-Himálayan Bhoteahs, via Lhassa, from China; a paper of the very same sort being manufactured at Lhassa; and most of the useful arts of these regions having flowed upon them, through Tibet, from China; and not from Hindústan.

Nepál Residency, November 1831.

P.S.-Dr. Wallich having fully described the paper plant, it would be superfluous to say a word about it. The raw produce or pulp (beat up into bricks) has been sent to England, and declared by the ablest persons to be of unrivalled excellence, as a material for the manufacture of that sort of paper upon which proof engravings are taken off. The manufactured produce of Népál is, for office records, incomparably better than any Indian paper, being as strong and durable as leather almost, and quite smooth enough to write on. It has been adopted in one or two offices in the plains, and ought to be generally substituted for the flimsy friable material to which we commit all our records. A. CAMPBELL

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