But as these burnt with a clear steady flame, they served quite as well as candles would have done.
The first process in the paper-making did not require much nicety in its execution; and, moreover, it could be performed as well inside the hut as in the largest room of a paper-mill.

All they had to do was to pick the bark to shreds.

This occupied them the whole evening--during which there was much conversation of a cheerful kind, with a joke or two about oakum-picking in a prison; and of this, not only the task in which they were engaged, but the situation in which they were executing it, did not fail to remind them.
When they had finished, they ate their frugal supper and retired to rest--full of the idea of continuing the paper manufacture in the morning.
When morning came, they had not much to do: for the next process was one which required the exercise of patience rather than of labour.
When the bark of the daphne has been thoroughly picked to pieces, it is put into a large pot or cauldron filled with water.

A lixivium of wood-ashes is then thrown in along with it; and it is suffered to boil for several hours.
As our manufacturers were without pot or cauldron of any kind, there would have been here an interruption of an insurmountable kind: had it not been that they had plenty of water already on the boil, and perpetually boiling--in the hot-spring near the hut.
Apparently all they should have to do would be, to immerse the prepared bark in the spring, and there leave it for a proper length of time.

But then the water, where it was hottest, was constantly in motion--bubbling up and running off; so that not only would the strings of bark be carried away, but the ashes would be separated from the mass, and consequently of no service in aiding to macerate it.
How was this difficulty to be got over?
Easily enough.