Part II.

The people of Madagascar worked iron,[403] but their name of the metal is Malayan; hence Mr. Crawford traced the art back to Malacca. Yet the Malay did not extend it far eastwards: according to Mr. E. B. Tylor,[404] ‘In New Zealand, where there is good iron-ore, there was no knowledge of iron previously to the arrival of Europeans.’ Passing over to the American continent, we find an immense industry of copper, but so little iron that, till late years, the indigenes were supposed not to have worked it. Ynka mines, however, have been discovered near Lake Titicaca; while excavations in the tumuli of the mysterious ‘Mound-builders,’ who may have attempted to reproduce the Egyptian Pyramid, yielded axes described to be of ‘hæmatite iron-ore,’ one of the easiest metals to smelt, and for that reason probably one of the first worked. Mr. Day, who figures one of these tool-weapons with the hammer-marks (p. 218), supposes it to have been ‘metallic iron,’ pronouncing hæmatite ‘extremely brittle and absolutely unforgeable.’[405] He quotes Mr. Charles C. Abbott,[406] who procured other specimens of aboriginal manufacture from the mounds. One hatchet was four and a half inches long by two broad, and nearly uniform in thickness, three-sixteenths of an inch; it had a well-defined edge, which from its slightly wavy outline and varied breadth, appeared to be hammered, not ground. According to Major Hotchkiss, who owned two other similar specimens, a series of four was found under an uprooted tree on an Indian trail in West Virginia.

Fragments of unworked hæmatite, small and irregular, were used instead of flint for arrow-heads.[407] Mr. Abbott also notices ‘a curious form of “relic,” known as a “plummet,” occasionally occurring and made of iron ore: one specimen[408] “is made of iron ore ground down until it is almost as smooth as glass.” As such “plummets” are found in the Western Mounds, as well as on the surface of the ground throughout the Atlantic coast States, and are always polished, it seems fair to presume that a cutting instrument of such hard material would undoubtedly be polished and ground, if at the time of its manufacture grinding was known or practised among the aborigines in fashioning their various weapons and instruments.’

[Heading: _IRON IN AFRICA._]

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 assegai-blades of the Bantu (Kafirs); nor is this art confined to the southern regions.[409] 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 men, 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.[410] When the ore is nearly pure, a small addition of carbon would convert it into steel;[411] 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.[412] For the anvil a stone-slab suffices, and for the hammer a cube of stone with sides grooved for fibre-cords.

The ‘Dark Continent’ is emphatically an iron-land, and all explorers have noticed its abundance of ore. Mungo Park[413] 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, 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 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,[414] 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 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.[415] 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,[416] 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:[417] ‘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.’

According to Strabo, Anacharsis[418] the Scythian, who flourished in the days of Solon (B.C. 592), invented not only the anchor[419] 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[420] 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.—_Æn._ viii. 449.

The wind-bag[421] 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,[422] 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[423] 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.[424] ‘The two bags of goat-skin 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 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 goat-skin, 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.’

[Heading: _THE BELLOWS IN AFRICA._]

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. Colonel A. Lane Fox is of opinion that the sculptures ‘possibly point to a Hindu origin for this particular contrivance.’ I agree with him, but I would also trace the Asiatic article back to its old home in Africa—Egypt.

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,[425] 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.

GENERAL TABLE OF TERMS.

+--------------------------+-------------+----------------+---------------+------------------+ | LANGUAGE | | | | | +------------+-------------+ CHARACTERS | PHONETIC VALUE | ENGLISH | OLDEST KNOWN | | NAME | FAMILY | | | EQUIVALENT | DATE OF | +------------+-------------+-------------+----------------+---------------+------------------+ | | |[Hieroglyphs]| Ba. | Earth, | | | | | | | Metal. | | | | | | | | 2200 | | | Hamitic, |[Hieroglyphs]| Ba. | Iron. | to | | Egyptian | with | | | | 2300 | |Hieroglyphs.| Semitic |[Hieroglyphs]| Ba’a. | Iron, | B.C. | | | Infusion. | | | Earth. | | | | | | | | | | | |[Hieroglyphs]| Ba’aenpe. | Iron. | | | | | | | | (_B.C. 4500?_) | | | |[Hieroglyphs]| Bet. | Iron. | | +------------+-------------+-------------+----------------+---------------+------------------+ | Akkadian. | | [Cuneiform] | Hurud. | Iron. |{Oldest Monuments,| +------------+ +-------------+----------------+---------------+{ at least | | | | | | |{ 2000 B.C. | | Assyrian. | | [Cuneiform] | Eru. | Iron. |{ (_B.C. 4000?_) | +------------+ Semitic. +-------------+----------------+---------------+------------------+ | | | נחושה | n’ghōshāh | Steel. | From | | | | ברזל | barzel | Iron. | 1500 | | Hebrew. | | ברזל עשות | barzel yāshūth | Bright Iron. | B.C. | | | | ברזל מוצק | barzel mūtzāq | Cast Iron. | downwards. | +------------+-------------+-------------+----------------+---------------+------------------+ | | Sporadic | 鏤 | Low, Lowe. | Steel. | | |Chinese. | or | 鐵 |Tie (pronounced | Iron. | | | [426] |llophyllian | | Tit). | | 2000 | | |(_Turanian_).| 金 | Kin. | Metal. | B.C. | | | | 鐵宧 | -- | Iron-masters. | | +------------+-------------+-------------+----------------+---------------+------------------+ | | | | | | Oldest Sanskrit. | | Sanskrit. | | आर | Ára. | Iron. | Probably | | | | अयस् | Ayas. | Iron. | B.C. 1500. | | | | | | | (_B.C. 400?_) | +------------+ Aryan. +-------------+----------------+---------------+------------------+ | | | χάλυψ | Khalyps. | Steel. | Homeric | | | | σίδηρος | Sideros. | Iron. | Age. | | Greek. | | | |{Blue Metal, | | | | | κύανος | Cyanos. |{prob. tempered| -- | | | | | |{Steel. | | | | | ἀδάμας | Adamas. | Steel. | Hesiod. | +------------+-------------+-------------+----------------+---------------+------------------+