About the beginning of the Christian era a tax was levied upon iron by the State exchequer, showing that the manufacture had become important. According to the Pi-tan or Pencil-Talk, written probably under the Ming dynasty[398] (a.d. 1366–1644), steel is thus made: ‘Wrought iron is bent or twisted up; unwrought iron (i.e. iron-ore or cast-iron) is thrown into it; it is covered up with mud and subjected to the action of fire, and afterwards to the hammer.’ This is the old and well-known process of steeling practised by the Greeks. Wrought iron was either immersed into molten cast-iron as into a bath, or it was heated with iron-ore and layers of charcoal-fuel covered with alternate strata of clay to exclude atmospheric influence, a treatment somewhat similar to what is still called ‘cementation.’[399] The ore was thus deoxidised by contact with excess of carbon; and a molten carburet was the result. It is not a little curious, as Mr. Day observes, to find Aristotle and Lieh-Tze describing the same process about the same time. But I hesitate to conclude with that able writer that the fact has any bearing upon ‘the old doctrine of the original unity of the human race; each section of mankind carrying off with them that common stock of knowledge which the entire family possessed before separation.’ Mr. Day, I have said, systematically opposes the ‘High Antiquity Theory’ (p. 208); and, though he holds to Revelation and to Biblical chronology, he has a curious tendency towards the mystical etymology of the Jacob Bryant school, and the obsolete Phallic theories revived by the learned and able work of the late Dr. Inman.[400]
The Pent Saow, also attributed to the days of the Mings, speaks of three kinds of steel used for knives and Swords, a division which again reminds us of Daimachus. The first is made by adding unwrought to wrought iron, while the mass is subjected to the action of fire. The second is simply the result of repeated firings as practised in Africa. The third is native steel produced in the south-west at Hai-shan: ‘In appearance it resembles the stone called “Tsze-shih-ying” (purple stone efflorescence).’ It is understood that the process of manufacture is kept secret. The ‘Hankow-steel,’ which comes to Tien-tsin from the upper Yang-tse, is most prized; and commands much higher prices than the best imported English and Swedish; the Chinese, like the ‘Caffirs,’ look upon these as ‘rotten iron.’
China also had her ‘literary blacksmith,’ like Wieland Smith, the northern Dædalus. We read that Hoang-ta-tie of T’ancheu, who lived under the Sung, followed the craft of an ironsmith. Whenever he was at his work he used to call without intermission on the name of Amita Buddha. One day he handed to his neighbours the following verses of his own composing to be spread about:—
Ding-dong! the hammer-strokes fall long and fast,
Until the iron turns to steel at last!
Now shall the long long Day of Rest begin,
The Land of Bliss Eternal calls me in.
Thereupon he died. But his verses spread all over Honan, and many learned to call upon Buddha.
The oldest Chinese iron-works were at Shansi and Chilili in the Ho districts, where there are inexhaustible deposits of ore and coal, and where the metal is worked to the present day. In 1875 Commissioner Li-hung-Chang, raised from the Government-General of Chilili to be Minister of the young King, sent Mr. James Henderson to England with orders to bring out the most modern appliances and apparatus for metal-working. It was proposed to build the new works at Tsze-Chow, a town two hundred miles south-west of Tien-tsin, the head-quarters of the Governor-General. Mr. Henderson had visited (1874) the establishment near Yang-Ching, Shansi, which had before been described by Baron von Richtofen and Dr. Williamson.[401] The iron ore bought at Ping-ding-Chow was found at the Royal School of Mines, London, to contain fifty per cent. of iron, loose hæmatite with little or no sulphur.
M. Sévoz, an engineer of mines long resident in Japan, studied iron-working in the province of Ykouno.[402] He found the people using an imperfect Catalan method, but able to treat at once sixteen thousand kilogrammes of ore, and to produce blooms weighing one thousand three hundred kilogrammes. These huge rods were broken up under a hammer constructed in the style of a pile-driving ram, to which motion was given by a walking-wheel 11·5 mètres in diameter, mounted by men. The description does not promise much; but Japan, though holding to her ancient methods in districts unknown to Europeans, produces iron cheaper than the English. Of her marvellous Swords I shall treat in Part II.