The process of manufacturing the salt on the north-coast is very simple, and depending on evaporation by the heat of the sun alone, may be favourably contrasted with the comparatively expensive process adopted in the Bengal provinces. Reservoirs are filled from the sea at high tide, and in them the water is allowed to remain for several days; this being found necessary to prevent the salt from being bitter. It is then conveyed by means of canals and sluices to the pans, which are distributed in compartments and banked in, so as to contain the sea-water, much in the same manner as the rice fields. If the weather be dry and the sun clear, five days are found sufficient for the process of evaporation in the pans; after which the salt is collected together in heaps, where it usually remains five days longer before it is brought into store. Under the Dutch government, the manufacture of salt was fanned out to Chinese as an exclusive privilege; and to these farms, under the plea of enabling the farmer to command a sufficient number of hands for conducting his undertaking, and enabling him to make his advances to government, extensive tracts of rice land were attached, over the population of which the farmer was allowed unlimited authority. By a continued extension of these tracts, a population far more numerous than the work at the salt-pans required was wrested from the administration of the regents and transferred to the Chinese: as they found their advantage in renting out the rice-fields, and employing the people in the transport of goods and other laborious offices of the country, the farms of course sold for more money. Under this system, it is difficult to say what was the actual cost of the salt to the farmer: the manufacturers were partly remunerated in land and partly in money, and the mode varied in every district; but this remuneration seldom amounted to more than a bare subsistence.