On these shelves or mychans, as they are called, the cakes are ranged to dry.  The drying takes two or three months, and the cakes are turned and moved at frequent intervals, till thoroughly ready for packing.  All the little pieces and corners and chips are carefully put by on separate shelves, and packed separately.  Even the sweepings and refuse from the sheets and floor are all carefully collected, mixed with water, boiled separately, and made into cakes, which are called ‘washings.’

During the drying a thick mould forms on the cakes.  This is carefully brushed off before packing, and, mixed with sweepings and tiny chips is all ground up in a hand-mill, packed in separate chests, and sold as dust.  In October, when mahye is over, and the preparation of the land going on again, the packing begins.  The cakes, each of separate date, are carefully scrutinised, and placed in order of quality.  The finest qualities are packed first, in layers, in mango-wood boxes; the boxes are first weighed empty, re-weighed when full, and the difference gives the nett weight of the indigo.  The tare, gross, and nett weights are printed legibly on the chests, along with the factory mark and number of the chest, and when all are ready, they are sent down to the brokers in Calcutta for sale.  Such shortly is the system of manufacture.

During mahye the factory is a busy scene.  Long before break of day the ryots and coolies are busy cutting the plant, leaving it in green little heaps for the cartmen to load.  In the early morning the carts are seen converging to the factory on every road, crawling along like huge green beetles.  Here a cavalcade of twenty or thirty carts, there in clusters of twos or threes.  When they reach the factory the loaders have several vats ready for the reception of the plant, while others are taking out the already steeped plant of yesterday; staggering under its weight, as, dripping with water, they toss it on the vast accumulating heap of refuse material.

Down in the vats below, the beating coolies are plashing, and shouting, and yelling, or the revolving wheel (where machinery is used) is scattering clouds of spray and foam in the blinding sunshine.  The firemen stripped to the waist, are feeding the furnaces with the dried stems of last year’s crop, which forms our only fuel.  The smoke hovers in volumes over the boiling-house.  The pinmen are busy sorting their pins, rolling hemp round them to make them fit the holes more exactly.  Inside the boiling-house, dimly discernible through the clouds of stifling steam, the boilermen are seen with long rods, stirring slowly the boiling mass of bubbling blue.  The clank of the levers resounds through the pressing-house, or the hoarse guttural ‘hah, hah!’ as the huge lever is strained and pulled at by the press-house coolies.  The straining-table is being cleaned by the table ‘mate’ and his coolies, while the washerman stamps on his sheets and press-cloths