ng the coloring matter; a
boiling and drying house, and a dwelling for the planter. Thus a
factory of ten pair of vats, capable of producing, at an average,
12,500 lbs. of indigo, worth on the spot L2,500, will not cost above
L1,500 sterling. The buildings and machinery necessary to produce an
equal value in sugar and rum, would probably cost about L4,000.

The indigo of Bengal is divided into two classes, called, in
commercial language, Bengal and Oude; the first being the produce of
the southern provinces of Bengal and Bahar, and the last that of the
northern provinces, and of Benares. The first class is in point of
quality much superior to the other. The inferiority of the Oude indigo
is thought to be more the result of soil and climate, than of any
difference in the skill with which the manufacture is conducted. The
indigo of Madras, which is superior to that of Manila, is about equal
to ordinary Bengal indigo. The produce of Java is superior to these.

Large quantities of indigo, of a very fine quality, are grown in
Scinde. I have to acknowledge the receipt, from the Indian Government,
of an interesting collection of documents on the culture and
manufacture of indigo in Upper Scinde. The papers are chiefly from the
pen of Mr. Wood, Deputy Collector of Sukkur, though there are several
others, perhaps of much value, from various other of the revenue
officers of Scinde.

Mr. Wood is of opinion that Scinde is much better suited than Bengal
for the production of this dye-stuff--the alluvial soil on the banks
of the Indus is equal in richness to that on those of the Ganges, and
the climate seems equally well suited for the growth of the plant. But
in two years out of three, the crops of the Bengal planter are injured
by excessive inundations, while the work of gathering and manipulation
is necessarily performed, during the rainy season, under the greatest
imaginable disadvantages. In Scinde, on the other hand, the inundation
of the river is produced almost solely from the melting of the snows
in the Himalayas, and it is not liable to those excessive fluctuations
in amount, or that suddenness in appearance peculiar to inundations
chiefly arising from falls of rain. The Granges sometimes rises ten
feet in four-and-twenty hours, and at some part of its course its
depth is at times forty feet greater during a flood than in fair
weather, while the Indus rarely rises above a foot a day, its extreme
flood never exceeding fif