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.’
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.
Fig. 104.—Iron Smelting Furnace amongst the Maráve People.
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