From The
Yielding Top Of Each Bamboo, A String Descends Attached To Either
Big Toe; Thus The Downward Pressure Of Each Foot Upon The Bellows
Strains Upon The Bamboo Top As A Fish Bears Upon A Fishing-Rod,
And The Spring Of The Bamboo Assists Him In Lifting Up His Leg.
Without this assistance, it would be impossible to continue the
exertion for the time required.
While the "bellows-blower" is thus getting up a blaze, another
man attends upon the well, which he continues to feed alternately
with fresh ore and a corresponding amount of charcoal, every now
and then throwing in a handful of fine sand as a flux.
The return for a whole day's puffing and blowing will be about
twenty pounds weight of badly-smelted iron. This is subsequently
remelted, and is eventually worked up into hatchets, hoes,
betel-crackers, etc., etc. being of a superior quality to the
best Swedish iron.
If the native blacksmith were to value his time at only sixpence
per diem from the day on which he first started for the mountains
till the day that he returned from his iron-smelting expedition,
he would find that his iron would have cost him rather a high
price per hundredweight; and if he were to make the same
calculation of the value of time, he would discover that by the
time he had completed one axe he could have purchased ready made,
for one-third the money, an English tool of superior manufacture.
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