Page:Wanderings of a Pilgrim Vol 1.djvu/139

 About ten men were retained, on extra pay, to finish the work. Each man having been supplied with a blanket, shoes, and a heavy wooden mallet, four at a time descended into the pit by a ladder, and beat down the ice collected there into a hard flat mass; these men were constantly relieved by a fresh set, the cold being too great for them to remain long at the bottom of the pit.

When the ice was all firmly beaten down, it was covered in with mats, over which a quantity of straw was piled, and the door of the ice-house locked. The pits are usually opened on the 1st of May, but it is better to open them on the 1st of April. We had ice this year until the 20th of August. Each subscriber's allowance is twelve ser (24 lbs.) every other day. A bearer, or a cooly is sent with an ice-basket, a large bazār blanket, a cotton cloth, and a wooden mallet, at 4, to bring the ice from the pit. The ābdār, having weighed the ice, puts it into the cloth, and ties it up tightly with a string; the cooly then beats it all round into the smallest compass possible, ties it afresh, and, having placed it in the blanket within the ice-basket, he returns home. The gentleman's ābdār, on his arrival at his master's house, re-weighs the ice, as the coolies often stop in the bazaars, and sell a quantity of it to natives, who are particularly fond of it, the man pretending it has melted away en route.

The natives make ice for themselves, and sell it at two annas a seer; they do not preserve it for the hot winds, but give a good price for the ice stolen from the sāhib loge.

For the art of freezing cream ices to perfection, and the method of making them in India, I refer you to the Appendix.

As the ābdārs generally dislike rising early to weigh the ice, the cooly may generally steal it with impunity. The ice-baskets are made of strips of bamboo covered inside and out with numdā, a thick coarse woollen wadding. The interior is lined with dosootee (white cotton cloth), and the exterior covered with ghuwā kopra, a coarse red cloth that rots less than any other from moisture.