"I considered that one day would be usefully employed in viewing the saltpetre works, which a very few years back had been established here, at the risk, and by the zeal and ingenuity of private individuals, with the view of supplying this colony with that necessary ingredient for gunpowder. The best sulphur is supplied from a mountain near the straits of _Báli_. For further details of these mines; of the manner in which the nitre is obtained, by an ingenious application of the latest European improvements in chemistry; of the sulphureous crater of the mountain, whence the sulphur, in its utmost purity, is supplied; of the reports of the French engineers, last year, on the improvement of the gunpowder of Java; of the wood selected for the best charcoal, and of the present state of the manufactory and powder-mills at _Semárang_, I must refer, at present, to several papers collected by me on this subject, which may be usefully applicable to our manufactures of gunpowder in India. Passing over these and other considerations, I shall only observe, that of these mines, one of them is cut in caverns into the soft white calcareous rock; and another, more regularly designed, supported by pillars or masses of the native rock, covers regularly formed beds of the native earth, which being impregnated with the native nitre, saturated with the evacuation of the numerous bats that haunt these caverns, and mixed with a compound of wood ashes, supplies the liquid that is boiled in large kettles, and afterwards left to cool and crystallize. The whole process is carried on, in a regular manner, under the direction of the first executor of this really grand work, who now resides at _Surabáya_[52]." The labour of felling the teak trees and transporting the timber from the forests, gives employment to a very considerable population, who are distinguished from those employed in other avocations, by the term of _blándong_ people, or foresters. The teak timber was formerly delivered to the government as a contingent, by the regents of those districts in which the principal forests were situated, the quantity being regulated according to the supposed extent of the different forests, and the means of cutting and transporting the wood. Previously to the year 1808, the amount of this annual contingent was eight thousand eight hundred beams of different sizes, according to the wants of the public service, of which more than three thousand were delivered from the central forests of _Rembáng_.