The club, then, is the universal weapon among the utterly savage; it is a weapon which may be procured without trouble; a round stone lashed to the end of a stick, the thigh-bone of a buffalo,--anything in fact of a handy length and with a heavy knob to it will suffice. As soon, however, as the savage advances a step--as soon as he learns the nature of iron and what sort of thing a sharp-edged chopper is--his blunt-headed club ceases to give him satisfaction. It is much more satisfying to slash an enemy than to simply bruise him--to poke and stab him full of red holes than to thump him--therefore there follows an immediate demand for sharp spikes and edged knives, and at least one member of every family sets up as a blacksmith. [Illustration: Papuan Blacksmiths.] But to be a blacksmith in ever so rude and humble a way, certain tools are absolutely necessary; the ambitious one must have a fire, a hammer, an anvil, and last, though most important of all, a pair of bellows. A fire he has; for a hammer his old stone-headed club does service; a handy bit of rock serves as an anvil; it is the bellows which is the toughest obstacle; and there can be little doubt that many a grand notion of blacksmithery has been nipped in the bud because of the projector’s inability to find anything animate or inanimate of so accommodating a nature as to hold and husband for his convenience so slippery a thing as the wind. Wonderful are the devices resorted to, all however more or less tedious and imperfect; of all sorts and sizes, from the bottle-like bag which the blacksmith holds under his arm, extracting therefrom a feeble blast as a Highlander manufactures bag-pipe music, to the elaborate machine in vogue in certain parts of Polynesia. Take that used by the Papuans as an example. Here we find two hollow pillars of wood fixed close together and furnished within a foot of the ground with a connecting pipe terminating in a nozzle. The interior of the pillars are perfectly smooth and furnished each with a “sucker” consisting of a sort of mop of finely-shredded bark; squatting on the top of these pillars the bellows-blower takes the mop-handles in hand and works them up and down, causing a tolerably strong and regular blast to emit from the nozzle. It is related by the missionary Ellis, that King Pomare entering one day the shed where an European blacksmith was employed, after gazing a few minutes at the work, was so transported at what he saw that he caught up the smith in his arms and, unmindful of the dirt and perspiration inseparable from his occupation, most cordially embraced him, and saluted him according to the custom of the country by touching noses.