pottery made by hand, not thrown on the wheel, is less and less often met
with, but ornamentation traceable to its being moulded on baskets is to
be seen; and calabashes, joints of bamboo, and close-plaited baskets are
used for water-vessels, and even to boil in. Among the curious processes
of metal-working, contrasting with those of modern Europe, though
often showing skill of their own, may be mentioned the simple African
smelting-forge by which iron-ore is reduced with charcoal in a hole in
the ground, the draught being supplied by a pair of skins for bellows.
In the far East a kind of air-pump is used, of which the barrels are
hollowed logs. The Chinese art of patching cast-iron with melted metal
surprises a European, and the Hindu manufacture of native steel (_wootz_)
is a remarkable process. No nation now exists absolutely in the Bronze
Age, but this alloy still occupies something of its old place in Oriental
industry. As an example of the methods still to be seen, may be mentioned
the Burmese bell-founding, which is done, not in a hollow mould of sand,
but by what in Europe is called the _cire perdue_ process, the model of
the bell being made in beeswax and imbedded in the sand-mould, the wax
being melted and the hot metal taking its place. The whole history of
machinery is open to the traveller, who still meets with every stage
of its development, from savagery upward. He sees, for instance, every
tilling implement from the stake with fire-hardened point, and the hoe
of crooked branch, up to the modern forms of plough. In like manner he
can trace the line from the rudest stone-crushers or rubbers for grinding
seed or grain up to the rotating hand-mills or querns still common in
the East, and surviving even in Scotland. From time to time some special
contrivance may be seen near its original home, as in South America
the curious plaited tube for wringing out the juice from cassava, or
the net hammock which still retains its native Haitian name _hamaca_.
Architecture still preserves in different regions interesting early
stages of development, from the rudest breakwinds, or beehive huts of
wattled boughs, up to houses of logs and hewn timber, structures of mud
and adobes, and masonry of rough or hewn stone. Even the construction
of the bough-hut or the log-house often has its peculiarities in the
arrangements of posts and rafters. Among the modes of construction
which interest the student of architectural history is building with
rough unhewn stones. Many examples of “rude stone monuments” are to be
seen on our own moors and hills. The most familiar kinds are _dolmens_
(_i.e._, “table-stones”), formed by upright stones bearing a cap-stone;
they were burial-places, and analogous to the cists or chambers of rough
slabs within burial-mounds. Less clearly explicable are the single
standing-stones or _menhirs_ (_i.e._, “long-stones”), and the circles of
stones or _cromlechs_. Ancient and obscure in meaning as such monuments
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