These pestles are
five and a quarter inches square, ten feet long, and at their lower end
formed into a truncated cone of three inches diameter, where cut off.
The conical part is covered with iron. The pestles are ten and a half
inches apart in the clear. They pass through two horizontal beams, which
string them, as it were, together, and while the mortises in the beams
are so loose, as to let the pestles work vertically, it restrains them
to that motion. There is a mortar of wood, twelve or fifteen inches
deep, under each pestle, covered with a board, the hole of which is only
large enough to let the pestle pass freely. There are two arms in the
axis for every pestle, so that the pestle gives two strokes for every
revolution of the wheel. Poggio, a muleteer, who passes every week
between Vercelli and Genoa, will smuggle a sack of rough rice for me to,
Genoa; it being death to export it in that form. They have good cattle,
and in good number, mostly cream-colored; and some middle-sized sheep.
The streams furnish speckled trout.
April 20. _Novara. Buffalora. Sedriano. Milan_.
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