156 NATIVE FOUNDRIES 



also in Sumatra and Timor, and probably in other countries as 

 well. 



A walk along the upper edge of the forest, although at some 

 distance from Ankeramadinika, will bring us to one of the 

 native smelting and forging stations, where iron is obtained 

 and made into pigs for the use of blacksmiths, as well as into 

 various implements. Iron is very abundant in the interior of 

 Madagascar, indeed the whole soil over an immense extent of it 

 is reddened by iron oxide, and in some places there is so much 

 magnetite that a compass is seriously deflected and is quite 

 unreliable. At such a foundry one may see in use the " feather- 

 bellows," which the Malagasy brought with them from their 

 far-off Malayan home, and which I believe is nowhere to be 

 found but in Madagascar and Malaysia. This consists of two 

 cylinders, about five feet long and six inches to eight inches 

 wide, made from the trunks of trees hollowed out. These are 

 made air-tight at the lower end and fixed in the earth in a 

 vertical position, about eighteen inches to two feet apart. In 

 each cylinder a hole is made a few inches from the ground, and 

 in these a bamboo cane or an old musket-barrel is inserted, the 

 other end being fixed into the stone or clay wall of the furnace. 

 A piston with feather valves is fitted into each cylinder, and 

 the shafts or piston-rods are worked up and down alternately 

 by a boy or man seated on a board uniting the cylinders. In 

 this way a continuous blast is produced in the furnace. (Such 

 bellows are also used by blacksmiths.) 



These foundries are always situated near a running stream of 

 water, so that the ore may be washed and cleared as much as 

 possible from earth and sand. The furnace itself is a hole about 

 six feet in diameter and one or two feet deep ; its walls are of 

 rough stonework, built up three or four feet, and thickly 

 plastered outside with clay. Charcoal is used in smelting and, 

 notwithstanding these rude appliances and methods, the iron 

 produced has been pronounced by competent judges to be of 

 excellent quality. Spade-blades, knives, nails, bolts and many 

 other articles are produced by the native smiths ; and in the 

 construction of the Memorial Churches, more than forty years 

 ago, I had ornamental hinges, railings, finial crosses, and other 

 requisite ironwork all excellently made and finished by Mala- 

 gasy blacksmiths. 



