58 iRON AND STEEL. 



nation had heard of it. The bronze age had come and gone on the 

 shores of the Mediterranean, and iron was in general use while 

 as yet the Scandinavians and Britons were rudely carving deers' 

 horns with flint knives and destroying their enemies with bludgeons. 

 In the vast host which Xerxes led into Greece were warriors bearing 

 stone weapons, while the great majority were armed with bronze, and 

 a few had advanced to the use of steel. So that to speak of the ages 

 of stone, of bronze, and of iron is as indefinite as if we should divide 

 history into the ages of absolutism, limited monarchy, and repub- 

 licanism. 



The dawn of history found iron in limited use. Chinese histor- 

 ians say that it has been employed in their country for many thousands 

 of years. Pliny the elder, in the early days of our own era, wrote 

 that, " as many kinds of iron as there be, none shall match in good- 

 ness the steel that cometh from the Seres, for this commodity also, 

 as hard ware as it is, they send and sell with their soft silks and fine 

 furs. In a second degree of goodness may be placed the Parthian 

 iron." India has made steel of the finest quality from times imme- 

 morial, and the method which was in use in prehistoric times is ob- 

 served there to this day. A small clay crucible is made in which 

 not more than two or three pounds of fine soft iron are inclosed to- 

 gether with charcoal, and covered with leaves of a certain plant, 

 when the whole is subjected to great heat till the iron is melted and 

 the result is a button of very fine and pure steel which they call 

 wootz. When Alexander defeated Porus, the latter gave the con- 

 queror 30 pounds of this steel, which was highly prized by him. 

 Malleable iron was also made in India in large quantities in very 

 early times. There is in the gate of a mosque near Delhi a pillar of 

 soft iron 60 feet high, 16 inches in diameter near the base, and es- 

 timated to weigh 17 tons. A Sanscrit inscription is interpreted by 

 some to affirm that this pillar was erected in the tenth century before 

 our era, and by some it is understood to make its date 1400 years 

 later. In the ruins of very ancient Indian temples wrought iron 

 beams have been found, and metallurgists are puzzled to understand 

 how these immense masses could have been handled and wrought 

 by means known to have been in existence in those days. The 

 Chalybians, a people inhabiting the southern shores of the Euxine, 

 were famous among the ancients for their iron and steel. Herodotus 



