At certain seasons every inhabitant capable of wielding the hoe is at work, and there is much incentive to such industry, for the soil is inexhaustible, and seems as if it could go on for an indefinite period yielding its four crops a year—­namely, wheat, rice, Indian corn, and vegetables—­supporting thereby a double population.  The plough is never used.  It struck me that the introduction of buffaloes from the plains would be advantageous in assisting the worthy Newar, whose religious scruples prevent his using the bullock.  There is a species of small buffalo, which is a native of the Himalayas, but it is never brought down by the Bhootyas into the plains, nor even to Katmandu.

We went one day to visit the arsenal, which a veteran of the Nepaul army took an especial delight in exhibiting, and naturally looked for expressions of wonder and delight from the barbarians.  But the only astonishment we felt was, that such a mass of fire-arms, so excessively old and so excessively dirty, should be thought worthy of being carefully ranged throughout the long dark rooms.  In a corner of one of these rooms the light streamed brightly through a window on some old-fashioned firelocks bearing an English maker’s name; they were trophies of the war with the British, and were held worthy of conspicuous places in the Nepaul arsenal.  The delighted old Colonel pointed these out to us with a laudable pride; he said the arsenal contained 100,000 stand of arms, and expected us to believe it.  Had they been in proper order, the collection would have been of importance numerically considered.

Their artillery was insignificant, but they possessed trophies denied to many more powerful nations in a pair of brass 2-pounders, also taken from the British in the same disastrous campaign.  I looked as abashed and mortified as I could, and pleased the Colonel exceedingly thereby.  In the same establishment was carried on the process of manufacturing powder of a very coarse grain, and we were shown sundry store-rooms containing grape and canister.

Leaving the arsenal, we mounted our elephants, crossed the parade-ground and the river, and, passing through the massive gateway, reached the magazine, situated in the interior of the city, where we had an opportunity of witnessing the process of hammering iron into balls.  The Nepaulese can produce no heat sufficient to cast balls, and are, consequently, obliged to beat them into the required shape, an almost endless operation.  By this tedious process the making of each two-pound ball occupies two men a whole day, and costs, including other incidental charges, about a rupee, so that the expenses of a siege would come rather heavy upon the Government.  All round the court-yard blacksmiths were forging and hammering, while in the middle of it a number of men were employed beating leather, so as to render it sufficiently pliable to undergo the process of being trodden soft, a curious operation,