When last visiting (April 19, 1876) the Mahabaleshwar Hills near Bombay, I had the pleasure to meet Mr. Joyner, C.E., and with his assistance made personal inquiries into the process. The whole of the Sayhádri range (Western Ghats), and especially the ‘great-Might-of-Shiva’ mountains, had for many ages supplied Persia with the best steel. Our Government, since 1866, forbade the industry, as it threatened the highlands with disforesting. The ore was worked by the Hill-tribes, of whom the principal are the Dhánwars, Dravidians now speaking Hindustani.[387] Only the brickwork of their many raised furnaces remained. For fuel they preferred the Jumbul-wood, and the Anjan or iron-wood. They packed the iron and fourteen pounds of charcoal in layers; and, after two hours of bellows-working, the metal flowed into the forms. The ‘Kurs’ (bloom), five inches in diameter by two and a half deep, was then beaten into Táwás or plates. The matrix resembled the Brazilian, a poor yellow-brown limonite striping the mud-coloured clay; and actual testing disproved the common idea that the ‘watering’ of the surface is found in the metal. The Jauhar (‘jewel’ or ribboning) of the so-called ‘Damascus’ blade was produced artificially, mostly by drawing out the steel into thin ribbons which were piled and welded by the hammer. My friend afterwards sent me from India an inkstand of Mahabaleshwar iron.[388] I could not learn from Hindus that they bury iron in the earth till the ‘core’ is reached. But they are well acquainted with tempering by cold immersion, as noticed by Salmasius (‘Exercit. Plin.’ 763): they still believe with Pliny, Justin, and a host of others, in ‘a Sword, the icebrook’s temper,’ and all hold that the hardening of metal depends much upon the quality of the water. They quench delicate articles in oil, a method also alluded to by Pliny, but they ignore his statement (xxviii. 41) that rust produced by goat’s blood gives a better edge to iron than the file. I am not aware that they have ever used for quenching purposes quicksilver, the best conductor of heat. In Burmah, as in India, the chief peculiarity of iron-smelting is the use of green-wood fuel.[389] Throughout the mighty ‘Hollander’ Archipelago of the Farther East, this metal, known in former days only by importation, is now everywhere common. Java received the Egyptian arts from India, which colonised her about the beginning of the Christian era: the now untravelled Hindú was then a voyager and an explorer. Dr. Percy describes the iron-smelting of Borneo,[390] which produces the Parangilang, a peculiar Sword-like weapon equally fit for felling trees and men.[391] At Tahiti (Otaheiti), on the other hand, Captain Cook was unable to make the natives appreciate the use of metal till his armourer wrought an iron adze in shape like the native. [Heading: _IRON IN CHINA._]