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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



the tips of these are incased in a clay tube. Wooden sticks 

 are fastened to the middle of the bladder covers or to the 

 upper end of the skins. By working these handles up and down 

 air is forced through the pipes into the tube and through the fire. 

 This is built in a hole dug in the ground. The heated iron is 

 worked hot between two stones used as anvil and hammer. Asse- 

 gai-blades are made with this poor outfit of such excellence that 

 they may be sharpened so as to be used as razors, and so pliable 

 that they may be bent double and then straightened after reheat- 

 ing. This is iron working, not smelting. Schweinf urth describes 

 how the Dyoor get the iron from the ore, and the process is x)i'acti- 

 cally the same throughout Africa, In March, just before seeding- 

 time, he says, they go to the woods to smelt iron. In the shaded 

 center of a very wooded spot they make groups of furnaces of 

 clay. These are cones not more than four feet high, widening to 

 a goblet shape. A cup-shaped cavity at the top communicates by 

 a small throat with the main cavity of the furnace, which is filled 



Fig. 11. — African Smiths at Work. 



with charcoal. The upper receiver is filled with fragments of ore 

 about a cubic inch in size. The hollow tunnel extends lower than 

 the ground-level, and the melted ore, finding its way down through 

 the fire, collects below. Openings here admit air and allow the 

 withdrawal of slag. The iron has to be twice heated, and when 

 taken out is in small bits which on reheating are beaten into 

 one mass. 



Metal-working had doubtless an exceedingly slow develop- 

 ment ; but it is remarkable how some people, strangers to the art 

 as originators, acquire it as imitators. Thus the Sacs and Foxes 



