18G6.] WOODEN IMPLEMENTS. 80 



iron-smelting population of this region; he said many had 

 died of famine, others had fled to the west of Nyassa: the 

 famine is the usual effect of slave wars, and much death is 

 thereby caused — probably much more than by the journey 

 to the coast. He had never heard any tradition of stone 

 hatchets having been used, nor of stone spear-heads or arrow- 

 heads of that material, nor had he heard of any being turned 

 up by the women in hoeing. The Makonde, as we saw, use 

 wooden spears where iron is 

 scarce. I saw wooden hoes 

 used for tilling the soil in 

 the Bechuana and Bataka 

 countries, but never stone 

 ones. In 1841 I saw a Bush- 

 woman in the Cape Colony 

 with a round stone and a hole 

 through it ; on being asked 



she showed me how it was used by inserting the top of a 

 digging-stick into it, and digging a root. The stone was 

 to give the stick weight. 



The stones still used as anvils and sledge-hammers by 

 many of the African smiths, when considered from their 

 point of view, show sounder sense than if they were burdened 

 with the great weights we use. They are unacquainted 

 with the process of case-hardening, which, applied to certain 

 parts of our anvils, gives them their usefulness ; and an 

 anvil of their soft iron would not do so well as a hard stone. 

 It is true a small light one might be made, but let any one 

 see how the hammers of their iron bevel over and round 

 in the faces with a little work, and he will perceive that 

 only a wild freak would induce any sensible native smith 

 to make a mass equal to a sledge-hammer, and burden 

 himself with a weight for what can be better performed by 

 a stone. If people are settled, as on the coast, then they 

 gladly use any mass of cast iron they may find, but never 



