Page:Researches into the Early History of Mankind and the Development of Civilization.djvu/179

Rh plan of working two or several at once is adopted. The Chinese tinkers, who practise the art, quite unknown in Europe, of patching a cast-iron vessel with a clot of melted iron, perform this extraordinary feat with an air forcing-pump, which has indeed but a single trunk and a piston backed with feathers, but is improved by valves and a passage which give it what is known as a "double action," so that the single barrel does the work of two in the ruder construction of the islands.

It seems from the appearance of this remarkable apparatus in Madagascar and in the Eastern Archipelago, that the art of iron- smelting in these distant districts has had a common origin. Very likely the art may have gone from Sumatra or Java to Madagascar, but if so, this must have happened when they were in the Iron Age, to which we have no reason to suppose they had come in the time of their connexion with the ironless Maoris and Tahitians. Language throws no light on the matter; iron is called in Malay, bâsi, and in Malagasy, vi.

It is but seldom that the transmission of an art to distant regions can be traced, except among comparatively high races, by such a beautiful piece of evidence as this. The state of things among the lower tribes which presents itself to the student, is a substantial similarity in knowledge, arts, and customs, running through the whole world. Not that the whole culture of all tribes is alike, far from it; but if any art or custom belonging to a low tribe is selected at random, it is twenty to one that something substantially like it may be found in at least one place thousands of miles off, though it very frequently happens that there are large portions of the earth's surface lying between, where it has not been observed. Indeed, there are few things in cookery, clothing, arms, vessels, boats, ornaments, found in one place, that cannot be matched more or less nearly somewhere else, unless we go into small details, or rise to the level of the Peruvians and Mexicans, or at least of the highest South Sea Islanders. A few illustrations may serve