practised among the aborigines in fashioning their various weapons and Instru

ments.'

But if the savages and barbarians of Oceania and the New World rarely worked iron, the contrary was the case with the equally uncivilised African races, negroid and negro, who, however, had the advantage of dwelling within importing and imitating distance of Egypt. I have elsewhere noticed the excellent assegaiblades of the Bantu (Kafirs); nor is this art confined to the southern regions.' Dr. Percy justly makes wrought iron the original form, which we see retained in the obscurer parts of Asia and Africa. The people always worked by the direct process,' the oldest style; which, however, is not wholly extinct in Europe. The art, quasi-stationary among wild inen, treats small quantities at a time: the 'voracious iron-works' of which Evelyn first speaks, are beyond its wants. Moreover it can utilise only rich ores, unlike the indirect process' of producing cast-iron by the blast-furnace. When the ore is nearly pure, a small addition of carbon would convert it into steel; and the latter is so easily made, that the wild Hill-peoples of Africa and India produce, and have produced from time immemorial, an excellent article in the most primitive way. The proportion of charcoal is considerably increased, and the blast is applied more slowly than when wrought iron is required. The only apparatus wanted for the manufacture is a small clay furnace, four feet high by one to two broad, like that used by the South Africans; charcoal for fuel, and a skin with a pipe or twyers of refractory clay for the blast. For the anvil a stone-slab suffices, and for the hammer a cube of stone with sides grooved for fibrecords.

5

The Dark Continent' is emphatically an iron-land, and all explorers have noticed its abundance of ore. Mungo Park mentions the surface ironstone of dull red tint with greyish spots used by his 'Mandingos': Barth confirms his assertion by describing magnetic metal about Kuka of the Mandengas, and at Jinninau in the Kel-owi or Tawareh country: Durham and Clapperton, when near Murzuk, found kidney-shaped lumps upon the surface; and about Bilma,

The people of Camarones River, Bight of Biafra, work up old cask and bale hoops into very creditable edge-tools and weapons, hoes, knives, and Swords (Rev. G. Grenfell, Proc. Roy. Geolog. Soc. Oct. 1882).

2 The origin of the modern process is still debated. Agricola (nat. 1494, ob. 1555) notices both malleable and cast iron. Dr. Percy (p. 578) quotes from Mr. M. A. Lower (Contributions to Literature, &c. 1854) that Burwash Church, Sussex, contains a cast-iron slab of the fourteenth century with ornamental cross and inscription in relief. The same authority declares that iron cannon were first cast at Buxted (Buckstead in Sussex) by Philip Hoge or Hogge in 1543 (35 Henry VIII.); and that his successor, Thomas Johnson, made ordnance pieces for the Duke of Cumberland weighing 6,000 lbs.

Dr. Percy (pp. 764 et seq.) notices the three processes of making steel (iron containing carbon in certain proportions): 1. The addition of carbon to malleable iron; 2. The partial decarburisation of cast iron; and 3. The addition of malleable iron to cast iron.

4 I borrow from O Muata Cazembe (Kazembe, the King) a rude sketch (p. 38) of one of the better kinds of iron-smelting furnaces used by the extensive Maráve race dwelling north of the Zambeze (River of Fish), which Europeans persist in miswriting Zambesi. The bellows, it will be remarked, are almost of European shape; but this peculiarity may be attributed to the artist.

Travels, pp. 275-77 (London, 1749).

capital of the Tibbús, nodules of iron-ore puddinged in the red sandstones-could this have been laterite or volcanic mud? It was the only metal seen in the hills of Mandara; but the Bornuese prefer to import their supply from the neighbouring Sudan. Mr. Warren Edwards, who had temporary charge of a Niger expedition, observed the natives supporting their cooking-pots over the fire with fragments of

FIG. 104. IRON SMELTING FURNACE AMONGST THE MARAVE PEOPLE.

surface ironstone; and it often struck him (as it does most men) that by some such means the smelting-process suggested itself. The metal is abundant in the Gaboon country, where the Mpangwe or Fans,' the western outliers of the great race, mostly cannibal, holding the heart of Africa, are able workers. They have a kind of fleam-money,' small iron bars shaped somewhat like a large lancet. I

1 Colonel A. Lane Fox (Prim. Warfare, i. 38) believes that the Fans and Kafirs (Caffres) are totally different races.' But both speak dialects of the same tongue, the great South African language. Modern

African travellers have traced community of customs from north to south, and from east to west, suggesting extensive intercourse, in former days, throughout the length and breadth of the Dark Continent.

came upon the metal everywhere in Unyamwezi, the 'Mountains of the Moon,' and to this universal presence of ironstone-not to damp and heat-the Portuguese attribute the marvellous displays of electricity throughout Central Africa. A whole night will pass during which the thunder is never silent; and the lightning enables one to read small print, like an electric light. Captain Grant, in his 'Walk across Africa,' tells us that the people pick up walnut-sized nuggets of iron covered with dusty rust, and in a short time produce a spear-head that glistens like steel. My fellow-traveller to the Gold Coast, Captain Cameron, when crossing Africa, in most places found iron and iron-smelting. In Kordofan, Mr. Petherick saw a rich surface oxide containing from fifty-five to sixty per cent. of pure metal. Livingstone remarked iron in the eastern regions of Angola,2 and traced it up the Zambeze-line from east to west. Mr. C. T. Anderson describes it as occurring in large quantities, either of ironstone or pure in a crystallised state. Finally, good old Kolben mentions large iron-flakes on the surface near The Cape.

But, as Colonel A. Lane Fox remarks: Simple heating is not sufficient for working iron a continuous air-blast is required to keep the temperature at a certain height.' It is interesting to see the means adopted by barbarians for procuring this necessary; and, having carefully studied it in various parts of Africa, I devote to it the remainder of this chapter. As Pliny repeats from Aristotle, 'Libya always produces something new.'

5

According to Strabo, Anacharsis the Scythian, who flourished in the days of Solon (B.C. 592), invented not only the anchor and the potter's wheel, but also the bellows. In Egypt, however, we find that these discoveries were already a thousand years old at least. The earliest appearance of the latter is the forge and bellows (in Egyptian 'H'ati'), depicted on the walls of a tomb in the days of Thut-mes III., about B.C. 1500. The workman stands on two bags of skin, such as are still used to hold water, alternately weighing upon one and upon the other; he inflates them in turns by pulling up a cord which opens a valve, and then he closes the hole with his heel. The bellows have twyers, and the illustrations show a crucible and a heap of ore: while the material of the H'ati is indicated by its determinative, a hide with a tail. This rude contrivance was adopted by the Greeks and Romans: hence the 'taurini folles' of Plautus: and Virgil's

. . . Alii ventosis follibus auras Accipiunt redduntque.—En. viii. 449.

1 Across Africa, chap. xix., July 1874 (Daldy, Isbister & Co., London, 1877).

2 Missionary Travels, p. 402 (London, 1857). Anthrop. Coll. pp. 128-134. Specimens illustrating the geographical distribution of corrugated iron blades, or blades with an ogee section, double skin bellows, and iron work.' As regards the ogee section, the author should have compared it with the arrow-heads whose plane sides are bellied on a twist' to cause rotation or rifling.

6

The wind-bag would be made of ox-hide, of goat-skin, or of the spoils of smaller animals, according to the volume of draught required. And thus, also, would originate the bagpipe, an instrument common to almost all original peoples.

But in the Dark Continent we find still in use an older form than that known to Thut-mes, and the earliest of the four several varieties. The late Mr. Petherick describes this rude contrivance in Kordofan: 'The blast is supplied by skin bags worked by hand; these bags are made of skins, which are flayed by two incisions from the tail down to the hocks; the skin, being drawn over the body, is cut off at the neck, which makes the mouth of the bag. After tanning, the hind legs are cut off, and each side of the skin sewn on to a straight piece of stick; loops are placed on the outside for the fingers of the operator to pass through. It can be opened and closed at pleasure; the neck is secured to a tube of baked clay, and four men or boys seated round the cupola, each with a bellows of this primitive description, produce a blast by opening the bags when drawing them towards them, and closing them quickly, push them forward; by which means the compressed bags discharge the air through the tubes into the furnace, quick alternate movements of the arms of the operator producing a blast, which throws out a flame about a foot high from the top of the furnace; and the slag with the metal is allowed to collect in a hole beneath it.' Casalis similarly describes the Basuto bellows, and Mungo Park that of Mandenga-land; Browne saw it in Dár-For,2 and Clapperton in Kuka and in the Highlands of Mandara, where the anvil was a coarse bloom of iron, and the hammers two lumps weighing about two pounds each. This is the bellows of Kathiawád 3 and of Kolapor in the Deccan, where Captain Graham notices that the mús or tubes for the blast are clay mixed with burnt and powdered flint. Mr. E. B. Tylor found it used by a travelling tinker at Pæstum.

The second and improved variety of African bellows was described by myself during a visit to Yoruban Abeokuta. It deserves attention because it is a notable step in progress, leading to a further development; the troughs are a rudimentary cylinder, and the handles form an incipient piston. The two bags of goatskin are made fast in a frame cut out of a single piece of wood; the upper part of each follis has, by way of handle, a stick two feet long, so that it can be worked by one man either standing or sitting. The handles are raised alternately by the blower, so that when one receives the air, the other ejects it; the form is like that used on the Gold Coast; and there is a perpendicular screen of dried clay through which the nozzle of the bellows passes, supplying a regular blast.'

Evidently in this stage of the bellows, the lower halves of the leather bags are useless the result would be the same if only the upper part of the wooden

Hence, too, we see our 'bellows'='bellies.'

2 This word is curiously corrupted in Europe. It is formed upon the model of Dár-Wadái, &c.; and means the abode, region, home (Dár) of the For tribe. My lamented friend General Purdy (Pasha) formerly of the United States Army,

admirably surveyed it, and died at Cairo in 1881.

ફ્

Vulgo Kattywár; described in 1842 by Captain (the late Sir G. Le Grand) Jacob in his Report on Guzerat (Gujarat).

4 The sticks correspond with the strings on the bellows of the Egyptian monuments.

troughs were covered with skin, air-tight but loose enough to make play. This third step has been taken by the Djour (Júr) tribes of the Upper Nile, in north latitude 20°, and it is thus described by Mr. Petherick: 'The blast-pipes are made as usual of burnt clay, and are attached to earthen vessels about eighteen inches in diameter and six inches in height, covered with a loose, dressed goatskin, tied tightly round them and perforated with a few holes, in the centre of which is a loop to contain the fingers of the operator. A lad, sitting between two of these vessels, by a rapid alternate vertical motion drives a continuous current of air into the furnace.'

This brings us to the fourth and last stage of African blast-improvement (fig. 105). Here the rudely-hewn wooden tube becomes a double-barrelled forcing-pump. The two air-vessels with their loose skin-coverings are attached to each base of the two central pipes that join into one. Such is the shape used in Madagascar, the cylinders being of bamboo, five feet long by two inches in diameter, and the piston a stick ending in a bunch of feathers.

The bellows described by Dampier in Mindanao and elsewhere in the Malay Archipelago, is evidently borrowed from the Madagascar type; and into Borneo, Siam, and New Guinea a hollowed trunk takes the place of the bamboos. The sculptures in the Sukuh-temple of Java, attributed to the fifteenth century, represent smiths making Kríses (Creases), the bellows being worked by another man, who holds a piston upright in each hand. FIG. 105.-PORTABLE AFRICAN Colonel A. Lane Fox is of opinion that the sculptures 'possibly point to a Hindu origin for this particular contrivance.' with him, but I would also trace the Asiatic article back to its old home in Africa-Egypt.

BELLOWS.

I agree

The nature of fuel was determined by the supply of the country. That of Egypt probably consisted of cattle-chips, a material still used by the Fellahs. A later allusion to this article is found in the legend of 'Wieland Smith': he mixes iron-filings with the meal eaten by his geese, carefully collects the droppings, and out of them forges a blade which cuts a wool-flock or cleaves a man to the belt without turning edge.

I conclude this chapter with the following table,' printed by Mr. Day at the end of his 'High Antiquity of Iron and Steel.' It gives at one view the languages, the characters, the phonetic values, the English equivalents, and the oldest known dates of the metals to which he refers. I differ from him in sundry points, and these I have taken the liberty to point out in italics.

Iron, Jan. 8, 1876.