According to Strabo, Anacharsis[418] the Scythian, who flourished in
the days of Solon (B.C. 592), invented not only the anchor[419] and
the potter’s wheel, but also the bellows. In Egypt, however, we find
that these discoveries were already a thousand years old at least. The
earliest appearance of the latter is the forge and bellows (in Egyptian
‘H’ati’), depicted on the walls of a tomb in the days of Thut-mes III.,
about B.C. 1500. The workman stands on two bags of skin, such as are
still used to hold water, alternately weighing upon one and upon the
other; he inflates them in turns by pulling up a cord which opens a
valve, and then he closes the hole with his heel. The bellows have
twyers, and the illustrations[420] show a crucible and a heap of ore:
while the material of the H’ati is indicated by its determinative, a
hide with a tail. This rude contrivance was adopted by the Greeks and
Romans: hence the ‘taurini folles’ of Plautus: and Virgil’s—
... Alii ventosis follibus auras
Accipiunt redduntque.—_Æn._ viii. 449.
The wind-bag[421] would be made of ox-hide, of goat-skin, or
of the spoils of smaller animals, according to the volume of draught
required. And thus, also, would originate the bagpipe, an instrument
common to almost all original peoples.
But in the Dark Continent we find still in use an older form than that
known to Thut-mes, and the earliest of the four several varieties.
The late Mr. Petherick describes this rude contrivance in Kordofan:
‘The blast is supplied by skin bags worked by hand; these bags are
made of skins, which are flayed by two incisions from the tail down
to the hocks; the skin, being drawn over the body, is cut off at the
neck, which makes the mouth of the bag. After tanning, the hind legs
are cut off, and each side of the skin sewn on to a straight piece of
stick; loops are placed on the outside for the fingers of the operator
to pass through. It can be opened and closed at pleasure; the neck is
secured to a tube of baked clay, and four men or boys seated round the
cupola, each with a bellows of this primitive description, produce a
blast by opening the bags when drawing them towards them, and closing
them quickly, push them forward; by which means the compressed bags
discharge the air through the tubes into the furnace, quick alternate
movements of the arms of the operator producing a blast, which throws
out a flame about a foot high from the top of the furnace; and the
slag with the metal is allowed to collect in a hole beneath it.’
Casalis similarly describes the Basuto bellows, and Mungo Park that of
Mandenga-land; Browne saw it in Dár-For,[422] and Clapperton in Kuka
and in the Highlands of Mandara, where the anvil was a coarse bloom of
iron, and the hammers two lumps weighing about two pounds each. This
is the bellows of Kathiawád[423] and of Kolapor in the Deccan, where
Captain Graham notices that the _mús_ or tubes for the blast are clay
mixed with burnt and powdered flint. Mr.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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