This Is Bound Firmly
Round The Rim Of Each Chamber With Tie-Tie, And The Bag Of It At The
Top Is Gathered Up, And Bound To A Small Piece Of Stick, To Give A
Convenient Hand Hold.
The straight cylinder, terminating in the
nozzle, has two channels burnt in it which communicate with each of
the
Chambers respectively, and half-way up the cylinder, there are
burnt from the outside into the air passages, three series of holes,
one series on the upper surface, and a series at each side. This
ingenious arrangement gives a constant current of air up from the
nozzle when the bellows are worked by a man sitting behind them, and
rapidly and alternately pulling up the skin cover over one chamber,
while depressing the other. In order to make the affair firm it is
lashed to pieces of stick stuck in the ground in a suitable way so
as to keep the bellows at an angle with the nozzle directed towards
the fire. As wooden bellows like this if stuck into the fire would
soon be aflame, the nozzle is put into a cylinder made of clay.
This cylinder is made sufficiently large at the end, into which the
nozzle of the bellows goes, for the air to have full play round the
latter.
The Fan bellows only differ from those of the other iron-working
West Coast tribes in having the channels from the two chambers in
one piece of wood all the way. His forge is the same as the other
forges, a round cavity scooped in the ground; his fuel also is
charcoal. His other smith's tool consists of a pointed piece of
iron, with which he works out the patterns he puts at the handle-end
of his swords, etc.
I must now speak briefly on the most important article with which
the Fan deals, namely ivory. His methods of collecting this are
several, and many a wild story the handles of your table knives
could tell you, if their ivory has passed through Fan hands. For
ivory is everywhere an evil thing before which the quest for gold
sinks into a parlour game; and when its charms seize such a tribe as
the Fans, "conclusions pass their careers." A very common way of
collecting a tooth is to kill the person who owns one. Therefore in
order to prevent this catastrophe happening to you yourself, when
you have one, it is held advisable, unless you are a powerful person
in your own village, to bury or sink the said tooth and say nothing
about it until the trader comes into your district or you get a
chance of smuggling it quietly down to him. Some of these private
ivories are kept for years and years before they reach the trader's
hands. And quite a third of the ivory you see coming on board a
vessel to go to Europe is dark from this keeping: some teeth a
lovely brown like a well-coloured meerschaum, others quite black,
and gnawed by that strange little creature - much heard of, and
abused, yet little known in ivory ports - the ivory rat.
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