the ring into a bangle with a tool resembling an ordinary awl. The finished article is often decorated with a coating of lac, and into this are sometimes stuck bits of tinsel or looking-glass. Better class bangles are all imported, many of them from Bombay.
Ordinary earthen pots are made everywhere, and a few potters at Rajahmundry make good water-bottles (gújas) out of a mixture of white alkaline earth (suddamannu) and ordinary potter's clay. The earth is said to be brought by Gollas from a village called Punyakshétram in the same taluk.
At Rajahmundry a few families of Dévángas make sugar-candy and soft sugar. White crystallized sugar is made in the Deccan Sugar and Abkári Company's factory at Samalkot referred to below. Natives of the district are said to have some prejudice against this sugar because it is clarified with bone charcoal, but the prejudice disappears if it is converted into sugar-candy or soft sugar (bura). The 'factory sugar' is therefore boiled in water, with the addition of a little milk, until it attains a treacly consistency, and is then poured into shallow plates, where it is left for ten days. It crystallizes in these into sugar-candy, and the liquid which remains among the crystals is again boiled with the addition of a little water, and is then well stirred with a wooden instrument until it turns into soft sugar. A precisely similar industry exists at Hindupur in Anantapur district, and no doubt elsewhere.
Some five or six persons, mostly Dévángas, make white sublimate of mercury at Jagammapéta in the Peddápuram taluk. Four variellies are made, namely basmam(a white crust), a white solid substance called kárpuram, and a red powder of two kinds, one called sindúram and the other shadgunam. The basmam is made by heating salt and quick- silver in the proportion of one to five for fifteen or sixteen hours, with a pot inverted over the mixture. The fumes form a crust on the inverted pot, which is the basmam. This is then put in retorts of bangle 'glass' which are coated with mud, and heated for the same period, when it turns into kárpuram. Sindúram is obtained by mixing quicksilver, sulphur, and ardhalam (mineral arsenic) in the proportion of one, one-half, and one thirty-second, and heating them for one and a half hours. The resultant matter is pounded in a mortar, and then heated in a retort like the basmam. For shadgunam, quicksilver and sulphur are taken in the proportion of two to one and are pounded in a mortar; the mixture is then heated in a retort like the basmam, only for a longer period. The quicksilver is got from Bombay and Calcutta. The existence of a large supply of cheap wood fuel in the neighbourhood is Mercury.
