But if the savages and barbarians of Oceania and the New World rarely worked iron, the contrary was the case with the equally uncivilised African races, negroid and negro, who, however, had the advantage of dwelling within importing and imitating distance of Egypt. I have elsewhere noticed the excellent assegai-blades of the Bantu (Kafirs); nor is this art confined to the southern regions.[409] Dr. Percy justly makes wrought iron the original form, which we see retained in the obscurer parts of Asia and Africa. The people always worked by the ‘direct process,’ the oldest style; which, however, is not wholly extinct in Europe. The art, quasi-stationary among wild men, treats small quantities at a time: the ‘voracious iron-works’ of which Evelyn first speaks, are beyond its wants. Moreover it can utilise only rich ores, unlike the ‘indirect process’ of producing cast-iron by the blast-furnace.[410] When the ore is nearly pure, a small addition of carbon would convert it into steel;[411] and the latter is so easily made, that the wild Hill-peoples of Africa and India produce, and have produced from time immemorial, an excellent article in the most primitive way. The proportion of charcoal is considerably increased, and the blast is applied more slowly than when wrought iron is required. The only apparatus wanted for the manufacture is a small clay furnace, four feet high by one to two broad, like that used by the South Africans; charcoal for fuel, and a skin with a pipe or twyers of refractory clay for the blast.[412] For the anvil a stone-slab suffices, and for the hammer a cube of stone with sides grooved for fibre-cords.