The Picotah.
97
Chap. 13.]
eise by a thwart post, poised with a sufficient weight at the extremity laidover one fixed in the earth; the water is drawn bv a bücket of goat’sskin.” a In some districts, the Hindoos have a mode of working theSwape, which, so far as we know, is peculiar to themselves. In Patna it is common, and the machine when thus propelled, is named the Picotah.
“ Near the well or tank, a pieceof wood is fixed, forked at thetop; in this fork another piece ofwood is fixed to form a swape,which is formed by a peg, andSteps ent out at the bottom, thatthe person who works the ma-chine may easily get up and down.Commonly, the lower part of theswape is the trunk of a tree; tothe upper end is fixed a pole, atthe end of which hangs a leatherbücket. A man gets up the Stepsto the top of the swape, and Sup-ports himself by a bamboo screenerected by the sides of the ma-chine.” He plunges the bücketinto the water, and draws it up byhis weight; while another personStands ready to empty it. In thevolume of plates to the Paris edi-tion, 1806, of Sonnerat’s Voyages,the machine is represented ratherdifferent from the above. The la-No. 37. Picotah of Hindostan. borer alternately Steps on and off
the swape, from a ladder or stage of bamboos erected on one side of itSee plate 23, Sonnerat.
The apparatus and mode of working it, is more fully described in thefollowing extract from ‘ Shoberl’s Hindostan in Miniature.’ “ By the sideof the well a forked piece of wood, or even a stone, eight or ten feethigh is fixed upright. In the fork, is fastened by means of a peg, a beamthree times as long, which gradually tapers, and is furnished with Stepslike those of a ladder. To the extremity of this long beam, which is ca-pable of moving up and down, is attached a pole, to the end of which issuspended a large leather bücket. The other end being the heaviest,when the machine' is left to itself, the bücket hangs in the air at the heightof twenty feet; but to make it descend, one man, and sometimes two,mount to the middle of the beam, and as they approach the bücket, itsinks to the bottom of the well, and fills itself with water. The men thenmove back to the opposite end, the bücket is raised, and another manempties it into a basin. This Operation is performed with such celeritythat the water never ceases running, and you can scarcely see the manmoving along his beam; yet he is sometimes at the height of twentyfeet, at others, touching the ground; and such is his eonfidence, that helaughs, sings, smokes, and eats in this apparently ticklish Situation.” Vol.IV > p. 22, 24. This mode of applying human effort, was early adopted inthe working of pumps—a piston rod being attached to each end of thevibrating beam. Dr. Lardner, has inserted a figure of it in his populär