Round about them during these many centuries, as multi-colored earths or rocks, were the ores of various metals. They little dreamed that when rightly treated certain of the heavy red, yellow, or black earths which lay right at their doors could give up that most useful metal, iron. No one even had knowledge of such a substance, for, unlike copper and gold, iron never occurs “free,” having too great a tendency to chemically combine with other elements, for example, oxygen of the air, with which, in moist climates, it so readily forms “iron rust.” Besides, its melting point is high and so much heat and carbon are needed for its “reduction” from the ore that, during the thousands of years that had gone before, it had never been produced.
Primitive Furnace for Smelting Iron
But one day by accident and under fortunate coincidence of rich ore, high heat, and plenty of carbon in the form of charcoal from the wood, a lump of metallic iron was formed underneath a pile of logs which had got afire and burned fiercely because of a high wind. When pounded between two stones this new heavy metal, too, was malleable and could be formed into a spearhead superior to anything yet known. Every one was interested and an observant one soon “doped out” that certain earths could be made to yield this new metal, iron.
The art of extracting it spread slowly, each artisan learning from his neighbor, and, as rich ores were plentiful in many districts, iron became more and more generally produced. Not only in one country was this so but evidence shows that in many others—in Egypt, Chaldea, Borneo, India, China, etc.,—roughly similar processes and crude furnaces came to be used.
Tubal-Cain, supposedly about 4000 years B.C., is mentioned in the Bible as an “artificer in iron and brass,” and a wedge of wrought iron was buried in the great pyramid of Cheops probably as early as 3500 B.C. This wedge was recently found and is now the property of the British Museum. The Chinese made use of iron many centuries before the Christian era, but the Assyrians are supposed to have been the first to use the metal on a really extensive scale.
The Pillar at Delhi, India
The much discussed pillar at Delhi, India, which is still standing in a remarkable state of preservation, is twenty-two feet high. It is made up of several wrought iron sections cleverly welded together. As the natives regard it with religious awe, metallurgists have been unable to make thorough investigation and chemical analysis. While the date of its erection is somewhat in doubt, it is supposed to have been about the 4th or 5th century A.D.
But from our modern viewpoint those early iron furnaces were queer things. The first were little more than piles of ore and wood or charcoal on the tops of hills where a brisk wind would make a hot fire. Later, with the invention of the crudest of bellows, the smelting was done in small holes in the side of banks of clay, charcoal made from the forest trees being used as fuel. Indeed, some of these types of furnaces still exist and are so operated to-day in neglected districts in Western India and elsewhere, producing their little five to 100 pound balls of iron after several hours of tedious work.