Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 132.djvu/829

Rh their grandfather, and congratulate him on his recovery when he returns in May. Still, the creator of savage reasoning is not necessarily a creator of all things, but only of some, like Caliban's Setebos, who made the moon and the sun, and the isle and all things on it,

So that it is possible the creator of the Abipones was merely their deified first ancestor. For on nothing is savage thought more confused than on the connection between the first man who lived on the world and the actual creator of the world, as if in the logical need of a first cause they had been unable to divest it of human personality, or as if the natural idea of a first man had led to the idea of his having created the world. Thus Greenlanders are divided as to whether Kaliak was really the creator of all things, or only the first man who sprang from the earth. The Minnetarrees, of North America, believe that at first everything was water, and there was no earth at all, till the first man, the man who never dies, the lord of life, who has his dwelling in the Rocky Mountains, sent down the great red-eyed bird to bring up the earth. The Mingo tribes, also, "revere and make offerings to the first man, he who was saved at the great deluge, as a powerful deity under the master of life, or even as identified with him;" whilst among the Dog-ribs the first man, Chapewee, was also creator of the sun and moon. The Zulus of Africa similarly merge the ideas of the first man and the creator, the great Unkulunkulu; as also do the Caribs, who believe that Louquo, the uncreated first Carib, descended from heaven to make the earth, and also to become the father of men. It seems, therefore, not improbable that savage speculation, being more naturally impelled to assume a cause for men than a cause for other things, postulated a first man as primeval ancestor, and then applying an hypothesis, which served so well to account for their own existence, to account for that of the world in general, made the father of men the creator of all things; in other words, that the idea of a first man preceded and prepared the way for the idea of a first cause.

 

 From The Pall Mall Gazette.

manufacture of fans is an important branch of industry in Japan, and no fewer than three million fans, valued at ninety thousand dollars, were, according to Mr. Consul Annesley's commercial report on Hiogo and Osaka, lately issued, exported from those ports in 1875. Osaka is the principal city for manufacture of the ogi, or folding fans, which are those almost exclusively exported, all descriptions of the bamboo kind being made there, the figures, writing, etc., being executed in Kiyôto. The principle of division of labor, as explained in an extract from the Hiogo News quoted by Consul Annesley, is carried out a long way in this branch of industry. The bamboo ribs of the fans are made by private people in their own houses, and combinations of the various notches cut in the lower part is left to one of the finishing workmen, who forms the various patterns of the handles according to plans prepared by the designer. In like manner the designer gives out to the engravers the patterns that he thinks will be salable, and when the blocks have been cut decides what colors are to be used for each part of the design, and what different sheets are to be used for the opposite sides of each fan. When these sheets with the sets of bamboo slips which are to form the ribs have been handed over to the workman, he, in the first instance, folds them so that they will retain the crease. This is done by putting them between two pieces of heavily oiled paper, which are properly creased. The fans are then folded up together and placed under pressure. When sufficient time has elapsed the sheets are taken out and the moulds used again, the released sheets being packed up for at least twenty-four hours in their folds. The ribs, which are temporarily arranged in order on a wire, are then taken and set into their places on one of the sheets after it has been spread out on a block and pasted. A dash of paste then gives the woodwork adhesive powers, and that part of the process is finished by affixing the remaining piece of paper. The fan is folded up and opened three or four times before the folds get into proper shape, and by the time it is put by to dry it has received an amount of handling Japanese paper alone would endure. When the insides are dry the riveting of the pieces together (including the outer covering) is rapidly done, and a dash of varnish quickly finishes the fan. The highest-priced fan that was ever used in the days of seclusion from the outer world was not more than five yen. Since foreigners have been in Japan, however, some