Here I had an opportunity of observing their system of smelting ore. The furnace is composed of finely-worked clay, nearly as hard as Roman cement. The dye-vats are composed of the same substance; the furnace is built of a circular form, and of about five or six feet diameter, and about eight feet high. From the top to the middle the furnace tapers inwards to the centre in the form of a funnel; it again widens from the middle to the bottom. At the bottom are fixed two pair of bellows, which are covered nearly over with earth, and kept constantly wet. The bellows are formed by cutting two large round holes in a large block of wood of the cotton-tree. The handles of the bellows are about a yard long, and about the thickness of the barrel of a musket. These are fixed into the centre of a circular piece of leather or hide at one end. This piece of hide is sufficiently large to cover the hole in the block of wood: it is put over this hole, and nailed round the edges. Besides the apertures there are two smaller holes, bored through the sides of the block to communicate with the large hole forming the body of the bellows. Over the mouth of the small hole, where it communicates with the body of the bellows, is a stopper or valve, which shuts close on the hole when the handle is pressed down. The two leather covers, being very loose, are raised up and down alternately, upon the same principle as the bellows used in England. The man who blows takes the handles (which are perpendicular,) in each hand, and raises one hand up, and at the same time presses the other down, so that with the two bellows a constant blast is kept up. The pipe is frequently made of a sort of clay, similar to that used in coarse earthenware; but when such things can be procured, old gun-barrels, which have burst on the coast, not unfrequently find their way into the interior, and are sold at a very high price for this purpose. Guns in good condition are never suffered to pass into the interior, if the chiefs on or near the coast can prevent it. But to describe the furnace: iron-wood charcoal, when it can be procured, is used for fuel. The furnace is then filled with a layer of charcoal and iron alternately, and then the fire is lighted at the bottom, and the blowing commences. Two and sometimes three hours elapse before a melting heat can be produced. The melting of the ore of course commences nearest the blower, and the fused metal falls into the bottom of the furnace, when some more ore supplies the place of that which is already melted. When the whole is melted, a stopper is drawn to let the liquid iron run into long narrow moulds, which have again to be melted previously to becoming fit for the hammer. This was the most efficient furnace I had yet seen, and the iron seemed remarkably tough and pliable. They seem ignorant of the method of hardening it, though swords and spear-heads, as well as arrow-heads, are manufactured in Kassokano.