Le Vaillant, while travelling in Southern Africa, on one occasion saw a number of Caffres collected at the bottom of a rocky eminence, round a huge fire, and drawing from it a pretty large bar of iron red-hot. Having placed it on the anvil they began to beat it with stones exceedingly hard and of a shape which rendered them easy to be managed by the hand. They seemed to perform their work with much dexterity. But what appeared most extraordinary was their bellows, which was composed of a sheepskin properly stripped off and well sewed. Those parts that covered the four feet had been cut off, and placed in the orifice of the neck was the mouth of a gun-barrel around which the skin was drawn together and carefully fastened. The person who used this instrument, holding the pipe to the fire with one hand, pushed forwards and drew back the extremity of the skin with the other, and though this fatiguing method did not always give sufficient intensity to the fire to heat the iron, yet these poor Cyclops, acquainted with no other means, were never discouraged. Le Vaillant had great difficulty to make them comprehend how much superior the bellows of European forges were to their invention, and being persuaded that the little they might catch of his explanation would be of no real advantage to them, resolved to add example to precept and to operate himself in their presence. Having dispatched one of his people to the camp with orders to bring the bottoms of two boxes, a piece of a summer kross, a hoop, a few small nails, a hammer, a saw, and some other tools, as soon as he returned our traveller formed in a very rude manner a pair of bellows about as powerful as those generally used in kitchens. Two pieces of hoop placed in the inside served to keep the skin always at an equal distance, and a hole made in the under part gave a readier admittance to the air, a simple method of which they had no conception, and for want of which they were obliged to waste a great deal of time in filling their sheepskin. Le Vaillant had no iron pipe; but as he only meant to make a model he fixed to the extremity a toothpick case after sawing off one of its ends. He then placed the instrument on the ground near the fire, and having fixed a forked stick in the ground, laid across it a kind of lever, which was fastened to a bit of packthread proceeding from the bellows, and to which was fixed a piece of lead weighing seven or eight pounds. The Caffres with great attention beheld all these operations, and evinced the utmost anxiety to discover what would be the result; but they could not restrain their acclamations when they saw our traveller by a few easy motions and with one hand give their fire the greatest activity by the velocity with which he made his machine draw in and again force out the air. Putting some pieces of iron into the fire he made them in a few minutes red-hot which they undoubtedly could not have done in half an hour. This