reduced to powder and moistened, laying the composition
on the filigree and keeping it over a moderate fire
until it dissolves and becomes yellow. In this
situation the piece is kept for a longer or shorter
time according to the intensity of colour they wish
the gold to receive. It is then thrown into water
and cleansed. In the manufacture of baju buttons
they first make the lower part flat, and, having a
mould formed of a piece of buffalo’s horn, indented
to several sizes, each like one half of a bullet mould,
they lay their work over one of these holes, and with
a horn punch they press it into the form of the button.
After this they complete the upper part. The manner
of making the little balls with which their works
are sometimes ornamented is as follows. They
take a piece of charcoal, and, having cut it flat and
smooth, they make in it a small hole, which they fill
with gold dust, and this melted in the fire becomes
a little ball. They are very inexpert at finishing
and polishing the plain parts, hinges, screws, and
the like, being in this as much excelled by the European
artists as these fall short of them in the fineness
and minuteness of the foliage. The Chinese also
make filigree, mostly of silver, which looks elegant,
but wants likewise the extraordinary delicacy of the
Malayan work. The price of the workmanship depends
upon the difficulty or novelty of the pattern.
In some articles of usual demand it does not exceed
one-third of the value of the gold; but, in matters
of fancy, it is generally equal to it. The manufacture
is not now (1780) held in very high estimation in England,
where costliness is not so much the object of luxury
as variety; but, in the revolution of taste, it may
probably be again sought after and admired as fashionable.
IRON MANUFACTURES.
But little skill is shown amongst the country people
in forging iron. They make nails however, though
not much used by them in building, wooden pins being
generally substituted; also various kinds of tools,
as the prang or bill, the banchi, rembe, billiong,
and papatil, which are different species of adzes,
the kapak or axe, and the pungkur or hoe. Their
fire is made with charcoal; the fossil coal which the
country produces being rarely, if ever, employed,
except by the Europeans; and not by them of late years,
on the complaint of its burning away too quickly:
yet the report made of it in 1719 was that it gave
a surer heat than the coal from England. The
bed of it (described rather as a large rock above
ground) lies four days’ journey up Bencoolen
River, from whence quantities are washed down by the
floods. The quality of coal is rarely good near
the surface. Their bellows are thus constructed:
two bamboos, of about four inches diameter and five
feet in length, stand perpendicularly near the fire,
open at the upper end and stopped below. About
an inch or two from the bottom a small joint of bamboo
is inserted into each, which serve as nozzles, pointing