. Travels in the interior of Brazil : with notices on its climate, agriculture, commerce, population, mines, manners, and customs : and a particular account of the gold and diamond districts : including a voyage to the Rio de La Plata. The Indian corn is ground by a horizontalwater-wheel, which acquires great velocity fromthe rush of water upon it. On the upper end isfixed the mill-stone, which makes from fifty tosixty revolutions in a minute. They have like-wise a mode of pounding the corn into flour, bya machine called a Sloth. Near a current of wa-ter a large wooden mortar is placed, the pe
. Travels in the interior of Brazil : with notices on its climate, agriculture, commerce, population, mines, manners, and customs : and a particular account of the gold and diamond districts : including a voyage to the Rio de La Plata. The Indian corn is ground by a horizontalwater-wheel, which acquires great velocity fromthe rush of water upon it. On the upper end isfixed the mill-stone, which makes from fifty tosixty revolutions in a minute. They have like-wise a mode of pounding the corn into flour, bya machine called a Sloth. Near a current of wa-ter a large wooden mortar is placed, the pestle ofwhich is mortised into the end of a lever twenty-five or thirty feet long, resting upon a fulcrum atfive-eights of its length. The extremity of theshorter arm of this beam is scooped out, so as toreceive a sufficient weight of water to raise theother end, to which appends the pestle, and todischarge itself when it has sunk to a given alternate emptying and filling of this cavitycause the elevation and fall of the pestle, whichtake place about four times per minute. Thiscontrivance surpasses all others in simplicity; andin a place where the waste of water is of no con-sequence, it completely answers its
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookidtrav, booksubjectminesandmineralresources
