The regular trading vessels, which pass through the Sunderbunds, perhaps every month, or two, are usually provided with very large _nauds_, or _gounlahs_, made in the form of a rather flat turnep, of a black earth which bakes very hard. Casks are never used in India for water; all the ships in the country trade have one or more tanks made of _teak_ wood, rendered perfectly water tight, and containing from twenty to fifty butts. The water is thus carried in a small compass, and remains sweet much longer than when in casks. Even if no other reason could be assigned, it must be obvious, that, in a tank, the surface of wood necessary to contain fifty butts of water, will not exceed six hundred and fifty square feet; whereas, each of the fifty butts would present a surface of more than forty feet, whence the whole must amount to two thousand square feet.
Where a ship is navigated by lascars, many rules and ceremonies are adopted for the preservation of the water from impure contact. When native troops are on board, only particular persons are allowed to lay it in, or to serve it out, and even under such precaution, many of the more fastidious shew great aversion to using the tank water; often undergoing great sufferings, both from hunger and from thirst, rather than drink of it, or even taste of viands prepared therewith. But this prejudice has, of late years, subsided considerably, in consequence of the frequent occasions the British government have had to send native troops on distant expeditions by sea.
Casks would certainly prove obnoxious to servants, and others, proceeding through the Soonderbunds, owing to a general opinion among them, that we convey spirits, meat, &c., in such vessels; which, having been once used for such a purpose, could never be viewed by them as receptacles for beverage, without disgust and execration.
The town of Calcutta is supplied with firewood by persons who resort to the woods, about twenty-five miles from Calcutta, where they cut the smaller kinds of _serress_, _jarrool_, _soondry_, _g’hob_, &c., into junks about four feet in length, which are rived into two or four pieces, according to their diameter, and carried to market, where such billets are usually retailed at from twelve to fourteen rupees per hundred maunds, delivered at the door. This is the only kind of fuel used in the kitchens of Europeans, and forms the supply of nine-tenths of the native population also: the remainder use the _gutties_ made of dung.