This Cloth Is Cut Into Various Pieces And Sewed Into Garments
With Needles Of The Natives' Own Making.
As the arts of weaving, dyeing, sewing, etc., may easily be
acquired, those who exercise them are not considered in Africa as
following any particular profession, for almost every slave can
weave, and every boy can sew.
The only artists who are distinctly
acknowledged as such by the negroes, and who value themselves on
exercising appropriate and peculiar trades, are the manufacturers of
leather and of iron. The first of these are called karrankea (or,
as the word is sometimes pronounced, gaungay). They are to be found
in almost every town, and they frequently travel through the country
in the exercise of their calling. They tan and dress leather with
very great expedition, by steeping the hide first in a mixture of
wood-ashes and water until it parts with the hair, and afterwards by
using the pounded leaves of a tree called goo as an astringent.
They are at great pains to render the hide as soft and pliant as
possible, by rubbing it frequently between their hands and beating
it upon a stone. The hides of bullocks are converted chiefly into
sandals, and therefore require less care in dressing than the skins
of sheep and goats, which are used for covering quivers and saphies,
and in making sheaths for swords and knives, belts, pockets, and a
variety of ornaments. These skins commonly are dyed of a red or
yellow colour - the red by means of millet stalks reduced to powder;
and the yellow by the root of a plant the name of which I have
forgotten.
The manufacturers in iron are not so numerous as the karrankeas, but
they appear to have studied their business with equal diligence.
The negroes on the coast being cheaply supplied with iron from the
European traders, never attempt the manufacturing of this article
themselves; but in the inland parts the natives smelt this useful
metal in such quantities not only to supply themselves from it with
all necessary weapons and instruments, but even to make it a article
of commerce with some of the neighbouring states. During my stay at
Kamalia there was a smelting furnace at a short distance from the
hut where I lodged, and the owner and his workmen made no secret
about the manner of conducting the operation, and readily allowed me
to examine the furnace, and assist them in breaking the ironstone.
The furnace was a circular tower of clay, about ten feet high and
three feet in diameter, surrounded in two places with withes, to
prevent the clay from cracking and falling to pieces by the violence
of the heat. Round the lower part, on a level with the ground - but
not so low as the bottom of the furnace, which was somewhat concave-
-were made seven openings, into every one of which were placed three
tubes of clay, and the openings again plastered up in such a manner
that no air could enter the furnace but through the tubes, by the
opening and shutting of which they regulated the fire.
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