ng, and there leave it for a proper length of time. But
then the water, where it was hottest, was constantly in motion--bubbling
up and running off; so that not only would the strings of bark be
carried away, but the ashes would be separated from the mass, and
consequently of no service in aiding to macerate it.

How was this difficulty to be got over? Easily enough. They had not
proceeded thus far without thinking of a plan; and this plan was, to
place the bark along with the ashes in one of the large yak-skins still
in good preservation, and after making it up into a sort of bundle--like
clothes intended for the laundry--to plunge the skin and its contents
into the spring, and there leave them--until the boiling water should
perform its part. By this ingenious contrivance, did they get over the
difficulty, of not being provided with a not.

When Karl thought that the bark was sufficiently boiled, it was taken
out of the water, and also out of its yak-skin wrapper. It was then
placed, in mass, upon a flat rock near by--where it was left to drip and
get dry.

During the time that it was in the water--and also while it was dripping
and drying on the rock--none of them were idle. Caspar was engaged in
fashioning a stout wooden mallet--a tool which would be needed in some
after operations--while Ossaroo was equally busy upon an article of a
very different kind. This was a sort of sieve made of thin splints of
cane, set in a frame of thicker pieces of the same cane--ringall bamboo.

Ossaroo had undertaken this special task: as none of the others knew so
well, how to fashion the bamboo into any required utensil; and although
he was now making something altogether new to him, yet, working under
the direction of Karl, he succeeded in making a sieve that was likely to
serve the purpose for which plant-hunter designed it. That purpose will
presently be spoken of.

As soon as the fibre was nearly dry, the mallet was brought into
requisition; and with this the mass was pounded upon the flat surface of
the rock--until it became reduced to a complete state of "pulp."

This pulp was once more put into the yak-skin--which had been gathered
up around the edges so as to form a sort of concavity or rude vat--and
again immersed under water--not of the boiling spring, but the cool
water of the lake--until the bag became full. The pulp was next stirred
with a stick--which brought the coarse dirty parts to the surface.
These w