“The furnace or bloomary in which the ore is smelted is from 4 to 5 feet high; it is somewhat pear-shaped, being about 5 feet wide at bottom and 1 at top. It is built entirely of clay. There is an opening in front about a foot or more in height which is filled with clay at the commencement, and broken down at the end of each smelting operation. The bellows are usually made of two goatskins with bamboo nozzles, which are inserted into tubes of clay that pass into the furnace. The furnace is filled with charcoal, and a lighted coal being introduced before the nozzle, the mass in the interior is soon kindled. As soon as this is accomplished, a small portion of the ore previously moistened with water to prevent it from running through the charcoal, but without any flux whatever, is laid on top of the coals, and covered with charcoal to fill up the furnace. In this manner ore and fuel are supplied and the bellows urged for three or four hours. When the process is stopped and the temporary wall in front broken down the bloom is removed with a pair of tongs from the bottom of the furnace.” This smelting was then followed by hammering to further separate the slag, and probably after a reheating to increase the malleability. It will be noticed that in this earliest process pure carbon was used as a fuel, and a blast of air to keep the fire at a great heat was employed. To what extent this carbon and air blast, and the mixing and remixing with other ingredients, and reheating and rehammering, may have been employed in various instances to modify the conditions and render the metal malleable and more or less like modern steel, is not known, but that an excellent quality of iron resembling modern steel was often produced by this simple mode of manufacture by different peoples, is undoubtedly the fact. Steel after all is iron with a little more carbon in it than in the usual iron in the smelting furnace, to render it harder, and a little less carbon than in cast or moulded iron to render it malleable, and in both conditions was produced from time immemorial, either by accident or design. It was with such a furnace probably that India produced her keen-edged weapons that would cut a web of gossamer, and Damascus its flashing blades--the synonym of elastic strength.