Le Vaillant, while travelling in Southern Africa, on one occasion saw a number of Caffres collected at the bottom of a rocky eminence, round a huge fire, and drawing from it a pretty large bar of iron red-hot. Having placed it on the anvil they began to beat it with stones exceedingly hard and of a shape which rendered them easy to be managed by the hand. They seemed to perform their work with much dexterity. But what appeared most extraordinary was their bellows, which was composed of a sheepskin properly stripped off and well sewed. Those parts that covered the four feet had been cut off, and placed in the orifice of the neck was the mouth of a gun-barrel around which the skin was drawn together and carefully fastened. The person who used this instrument, holding the pipe to the fire with one hand, pushed forwards and drew back the extremity of the skin with the other, and though this fatiguing method did not always give sufficient intensity to the fire to heat the iron, yet these poor Cyclops, acquainted with no other means, were never discouraged. Le Vaillant had great difficulty to make them comprehend how much superior the bellows of European forges were to their invention, and being persuaded that the little they might catch of his explanation would be of no real advantage to them, resolved to add example to precept and to operate himself in their presence. Having dispatched one of his people to the camp with orders to bring the bottoms of two boxes, a piece of a summer kross, a hoop, a few small nails, a hammer, a saw, and some other tools, as soon as he returned our traveller formed in a very rude manner a pair of bellows about as powerful as those generally used in kitchens. Two pieces of hoop placed in the inside served to keep the skin always at an equal distance, and a hole made in the under part gave a readier admittance to the air, a simple method of which they had no conception, and for want of which they were obliged to waste a great deal of time in filling their sheepskin. Le Vaillant had no iron pipe; but as he only meant to make a model he fixed to the extremity a toothpick case after sawing off one of its ends. He then placed the instrument on the ground near the fire, and having fixed a forked stick in the ground, laid across it a kind of lever, which was fastened to a bit of packthread proceeding from the bellows, and to which was fixed a piece of lead weighing seven or eight pounds. The Caffres with great attention beheld all these operations, and evinced the utmost anxiety to discover what would be the result; but they could not restrain their acclamations when they saw our traveller by a few easy motions and with one hand give their fire the greatest activity by the velocity with which he made his machine draw in and again force out the air. Putting some pieces of iron into the fire he made them in a few minutes red-hot which they undoubtedly could not have done in half an hour. This specimen of his skill raised their astonishment to the highest pitch: they were almost convulsed and thrown into a delirium. They danced and capered around the bellows, each tried them in turn, and they clapped their hands the better to testify their joy. They begged him to make them a present of this wonderful machine and seemed to wait for his answer with impatience, not imagining that he would readily give up so valuable a piece of furniture. To their extreme satisfaction he granted their request, and they undoubtedly yet preserve a remembrance of that stranger who first supplied them with the most essential instrument of metallurgy.
PART X
INCIDENTS OF PERSONAL PERIL AND DISCOMFORT OF TRAVELLERS AND EXPLORERS.
CHAPTER XXV.
A night’s lodging at Brass—Delightful bedfellows—Sleeping out on the Gambia—“Voices of the Night”—Lodging “up a tree”—Half a cigar for supper—The “leafy couch” abandoned—The bright side of the picture—Dr. Livingstone no washerwoman—An alarming “camping out” incident—The terrible tsetse—The camp in the wilderness—The privileges and perquisites of a Pagazi—No finery worn on the road—Recreation on the march—Daily life of an Eastern African—His sports and pastimes—Approaching a cannibal shore.
It may be safely asserted that, as a rule, the inhabitants of all civilized countries “who live at home at ease” have but a very inadequate notion of the pains and penalties endured by those explorers and adventurers whose pleasure or business it is to undertake pilgrimages more or less perilous, and on whom the said easyliving folk are dependent for all their knowledge of the ways and means of peoples barbarous and remote. Nor is it very surprising that it should be so. First of all comes in the traveller’s delicacy and disinclination to parade his personal affairs (which for by far the greater part mean his discomforts and dangers and sicknesses) in a narrative exclusively concerning other people and things, only in as far as he is associated with them in a manner too intimate for his presence to be ignored. Nor will the selfish book-buyer tolerate the adoption of any other course; it is the mysteries revealed, and not the medium revealing them, that he takes an interest in, and in most cases cares as little for the personal sensations of traveller Brown or Robinson as that the leather casing of his telescope is incommoded by the heat while he is making solar observations. Even in the case of the humane reader, there is danger that the interest excited by a book of wonders, savage or otherwise, will shut the author from his consideration from the time of scanning the title-page to the perusal of the last line. With this view of the matter before us some small measure of justice may be effected and the reader at the same time be edified by a select few instances of personal adventure and mishap that have occurred to sundry of the brave men whose records have assisted the compilation of this work. Let Mr. Hutchinson speak first as to the delights of a night’s lodging in Brass, a Western African town, as the reader will recollect, of unenviable celebrity:
“King Keya meets us in the street and offers an invitation to his country house to spend the night there; as evening is approaching we accept his hospitality and forthwith proceed to the royal suburban residence.
“If I were not alive now, and conscious of writing this in the cabin of H.M.S. V——, I could not believe that I ever should have been fortunate enough to enjoy such an uninterrupted continuation of delights as those experienced during that night’s stay in the royal abode at Brass.