Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 26.djvu/113

Rh if they had nothing better, two sticks. A stone is made to serve as an anvil. Iron beads and bracelets are made, and the last are adorned with some neatly engraved pattern. Some of the rings of which I have obtained specimens, which have been simply turned upon a stick and welded, would do credit to a European smith. I have seen copper bracelets that had been bent into a spiral shape resembling a coiled snake. The Hottentots like bracelets and rings made by winding brass and copper wire around a coil of leather, in which patterns are produced by mingling wires of different sizes. The Ovambos wear heavy copper rings on their ankles, which are bent upon the legs. One of these rings, which I presented to the Ethnological Museum in Berlin, is very like some of the rings that are found in northern graves. Other works of the South African smith's art are iron lances having the handles ornamented with an ox-tail flier, barbed arrow-heads, double-edged knives and daggers, the latter without guards; and axe and hatchet blades, which are now used in making wooden articles. Almost everything that is made of wood has to be formed from a single piece, for the art of permanently joining two pieces of wood together seems to be wanting among these people. They do not know how either to dovetail, nail, or glue. Hence, in making every article of wooden-ware, whether a spoon or a boat, the artificer has to be governed by the shape and size of his block. The knife-cases and dagger-sheaths are thus made from one piece; and, as the natives have no boring-tools, one of the cheeks of the sheath has to be cut entirely away, excepting thin strips at the corners to hold the blade in its place. The tools used for hollowing out the wooden vessels are a double-adze, or tribill, and an axe worked like a chisel. The adze is a triangular iron, shaped so as to present a knife-edge at one end and a point at the other, and is driven through a hole previously burned in the handle, perpendicularly to it, and in such a manner that every blow made with the tool in hewing shall drive it tighter up. The outside of the vessel is shaped with the adze; all is done by eye, without any such aids as the square or compass, and nothing but the hands to hold the block while it is hewed. But the work is performed with a skill and finish that would do credit even to a shop provided with the implements of civilized artisans. This kind of work appears to belong to the chief, and to be regarded as a kind of state function; for, although it may not be done by the chief himself, it is generally performed under his eye, at the village fire, and is submitted to his inspection from time to time while it is going on. If a wooden vessel becomes cracked, it is not thrown away, but is mended, if possible, by sewing up, or patching with fibers of tough grass, or of the fan-palm common in the country, and then smeared with cow-dung, a substance which the Africans do not regard as unclean, to make it milk-tight. Round-headed canes, long and short throw-sticks, and arrows of hard wood are carved with knives.