SICILIAN WOMEN GRINDING IN A MILL.

Maori Messenger : Te Karere Maori, Volume I, Issue 8, 1 November 1855, Page 12

SICILIAN WOMEN GRINDING IN A MILL.

On Matt. xxiv. 41 ,—'Two women shall be grinding at the mill,—Dr. Kitto and others remark that the operation of grinding corn is generally performed in the East by women, who usually thus prepare daily the quantity required for that day by the family of which they belong. Dr. Clarke, noting tho custom as still existing at Nazareth says: 'Scarcely had we reached the apartment prepared for our reception, when, looking into the courtyard belonging to the house, we beheld tvro women grinding at the mil!, in a manner most forcibly illustrating the saying of our Saviour. They were preparing flour to makr our bread, as is always customery in the country I when strangers arrive. The two women, seated!

upon the ground, opposite to each other, held between the m the two round flat stones, such as are seen in Lapland, and such as in Scotland are called querns, In the centre of the upper stone was a cavity for pouring in the corn ; and, by the side of this, an upright wooden handle for moving the stone. As the operation began, one of the woman with her right hand pushed this handle to the women opposite, who again sent it to her companion,—thus communicating a rotatory and very rapid motion to the upper stone; their left hands being all the while employed in supplying fresh corn, as fast as the bran and flour escaped from the sides of the machine' But, although this hand-mill is in general use throughout the East, where wind or* water mills are unknown yet as its smallness renders the operation tedious, a fixed mill is sometimes used in large establishments. This differs little from the portable mill, except in its size. It acts in the same manner as the other, and like that, is worked by women, as appears from our woodcut,' which shows a Sicilian mill of a like description.