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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