The subject next to be considered is Fire and its uses. Man understands fire and deals with it in ways quite beyond the intelligence of the lower animals. There is an old story how, in the forests of equatorial Africa, when travellers had gone away in the morning and left their fires burning, the huge manlike apes called pongos (probably our gorillas) would come and sit round the burning logs till they went out, not having the sagacity to lay more wood on. This story is often repeated to contrast human intelligence with the dulness of even the highest apes. Of course there had been forest-fires in ages before man, as when the trees had been set in flames by lightning or by a lava stream. But of all creatures man alone has known how to manage fire, to carry it from place to place with burning brands, and when it went out to produce it afresh. No savage tribe seems really to have been found so low as to be without fire. In the limestone caverns, among the relics of the mammoth period, morsels of charcoal and burnt bones are found imbedded, which show that even in that remote antiquity the rude cave-men made fires to cook their food and warm themselves by.

As to the art of producing fire, the savage way was mostly by the friction of two pieces of wood, and to this day travellers may now and then see the simple apparatus at work. The hand fire-drill consists of a stick like an arrow-shaft cut to a blunt point, which is twirled like a chocolate-muller between the hands (shifted up when they get too far down) with such speed and pressure as to bore a hole into an under-piece of wood, till the charred dust made by the boring takes fire. Fig. 72 shows a Bushman thus drilling fire while his companion attends to the tinder. The Polynesian way is different, pushing the pointed stick along a groove of its own making in the under-piece of wood. Either method will make fire in a few minutes, but knack and proper choice of wood are needed, and one of us will hardly succeed. For easier working, some nations have long had a mechanical improvement on the simple savage fire-drill, by driving it with a thong wound a couple of turns round the stick, and pulled to and fro; also, working it with a bow like the common bow-drill of our tool-shops is not unknown. In either case a top-piece is required to keep the drill down (not too hard) on its bearing.

Among civilized nations, the old fire-drill had already in ancient times been superseded in common use by better contrivances, especially the flint and steel. But although discarded from practical life, it has been kept up for ceremonial purposes. As has been already mentioned, (p. 16) the Brahmans may be still seen “churning” with a fire-drill driven by a hair-cord the pure divine fire for their sacrifices, thus religiously keeping to the old-fashioned instrument used in daily life by the early Aryans. The ancient Romans had such a survival of their past state of arts in the law that if the vestal virgins let out the sacred fire, it was to be made afresh by drilling into a wooden board. The old art has even lasted on in Europe to our own day as the orthodox means of kindling the “need-fire” with which, when there was a murrain, the peasants in many parts used to light bonfires to drive the horses and cattle through, to save them from the pestilence. This rite, inherited from the religion of præ-Christian times, requires new wild-fire made by friction, not the tame fire of the hearth. The last need-fire on record in Great Britain is perhaps one that was made in Perth in 1826, but they may still be seen in Sweden and elsewhere when there is cholera or other pestilence about. In the last century there was a law passed forbidding the superstitious friction-fire in Jönköping, the very district now famous for its cheap tandstickor or tinder-sticks, that is, lucifer-matches. So curiously do the extremes of civilization come together in the world.

The fire-drill is a means of converting mechanical force into heat till the burning-point of wood is reached. But all that is really wanted is a glowing hot particle or spark, and this can be far more easily got in other ways. Breaking a nodule of iron pyrites picked up on the sea-shore, and with a bit of flint striking sparks from it on tinder, is a way of fire-making quite superior to the use of the wooden drill. It was known to some modern savages, even the miserable natives of Tierra del Fuego; to the præhistoric men of Europe, as appears from the bits of pyrites found in their caves; and of course to the old civilized world, as witness the Greek name of the mineral, puritēs or “fiery.” Substitute for this a piece of iron, and we have the flint-and-steel, the ordinary apparatus of nations from their entry into the iron age till modern times. Yet even this has now been so discarded that the old-fashioned kitchen tinder-box with its flint and U-shaped steel, and damper for preparing the tinder from scraps of burnt linen to light the brimstone-match with, has become a curiosity worth securing when found by chance in some farmhouse. Mention need hardly be made here of the burning-lens and the concave mirror known in ancient Greece, nor of the wooden condensing syringe (much like that described in our books on physics) known in the Chinese region; these are rather curious than practically important. Quite otherwise with the invention of the lucifer-match, dating from about 1840. Its action depends on phosphorus igniting by being rubbed, the head of an ordinary lucifer being of an inflammable composition, containing chlorate or nitrate of potash, which is fired by particles of phosphorus mixed in with it; for the safety-match, these particles of phosphorus are put, not in the match-head, but on the rubber instead.

In the low levels of civilization the hut is often so small that the fire has to be made outside. But when it becomes spacious enough, the fire of logs burns on the hard-trodden earth in the middle of the hut, the smoke finding its way out as it can by door and cracks. Those who have chanced to spend a night lying on the ground with their feet to the fire in such a dwelling, know both what place the fire has in barbaric comfort, and how that comfort was increased when builders took the trouble to make a smoke-hole in the roof, and afterwards came to a real chimney. The history of artificial warming from this point lies so plainly before us as not to need a long description. From the fire of a few sticks on the cottage hearth, we come to the wide fire-places in the halls of country houses, with their fire-dogs, after the fashion of the middle ages. Then come the coal fires in open grates, the closed stoves, and the arrangements for warming the house with currents of hot air, or circulating pipes of hot water.

From house-warming we come to cookery. The heat applied in cooking food, bursting the cells and softening the tissues so as to make it easier to chew, is an important aid to digestion, saving energy which would be wasted on assimilating raw flesh or vegetables. It would not indeed be impossible for man to live on uncooked food, and perhaps the nearest approach to this is found on some coral islands of the Pacific, where raw fish and coco-nuts form a great part of the native diet. Low tribes, especially half-starved wanderers of the deserts, such as the Australians, eat insects, grubs, shellfish, and small reptiles, raw as they find them; and Brazilian forest-men have been seen to imitate the ant-bear by poking a stick into an ant-hill, and letting the ants run up it into their mouths. These practices shock Europeans, who themselves however have no scruples as to oysters and cheese-mites, to which they happen to be accustomed. But these rude tribes know how to cook, as indeed all mankind do, the familiar definition of man as the “cooking animal” having no proved exception, ancient or modern. Civilized nations have come so thoroughly to this way of assisting nature, that they cook almost everything they eat, only keeping up primitive habits in eating nuts, berries, and other fruit raw as more pleasing to the taste. It has long been looked on as a sign of low culture to eat raw meat, like the Eurytanes of the interior of Greece whom Thukydides mentions as “most ignorant in their speech, and said to be raw-eaters (ömophagoi).” Even the native tribes of New England were struck with this habit among the roving race of the far north, whom they called accordingly Eskimantsic or “raw-flesh-eaters,” a name they still bear in its French form Esquimaux.

The roughest ways of cooking are to be seen among savages, who broil their meat on the burning logs, or roast it stuck on the primitive spit, a pointed stake planted sloping over the fire, or bury it in the hot embers as boys do chestnuts or potatoes. From this latter mode comes the invention of the oven, which in its simplest form may be a hollow tree set on fire and smouldering inside, or a pit dug in the ground and heated by a wood-fire, often with red-hot stones put in to help the baking. Brazilian tribes set up four posts with a grating of branches across, on which they laid their game and fish with a slow fire underneath. Meat prepared on such a boucan will keep a long while; the pirates of the West Indies used thus to prepare their stores of meat, whence comes the word bucaneer. To the buffalo-hunting tribes of North America belongs the invention of pemmican, meat dried and pounded for keeping, while in many parts of the world people know how to dry sheets or strips of meat in the hot sun; this is called jerked meat, and will keep. The use of hot stones in baking has just been mentioned. From this the important art of boiling food may have been derived. In many parts of the world, among tribes who do not know how to make an earthen pot, there is found the curious art of stone-boiling, which is a sort of wet baking. The Assinaboins of North America have their name, which means “stone-boilers,” from their old practice of digging a hole in the ground, lining it with a piece of the slaughtered animal’s hide, and then putting in the meat with water, and hot stones to boil it. Tribes of the far West actually managed by means of red-hot stones to boil salmon and acorn-porridge in their baskets made of close-plaited roots of the spruce fir. The process of stone-boiling has lasted on even in Europe where found convenient for heating water in wooden tubs. Linnæus on his northern tour found the Bothland people brewing beer in this way, and to this day the “rude Carinthian boor” drinks such “stone-beer,” as it is called. As soon as the cooks anywhere are provided with earthen pots or metal kettles, boiling over the fire becomes easy. Yet it is curious to notice the absence of boiled meats from the feasts of the Homeric heroes, where there is so much about the joints stuck on spits to roast, and the vengeful Odysseus rolling to and fro on his bed is compared to an eager roaster turning a stuffed paunch before the blazing fire. Among the old Northmen it was otherwise, for it is told in the Edda how the warriors feast every night in Walhalla on the sodden flesh of the boar Sæhrimnir, who is daily boiled in the huge kettle, and comes to life again ready for the morrow’s hunt.

The simplest ways of making bread, such as seem to have come in with the earliest cultivation of grain, answer so well for some purposes that they may still be seen almost unchanged. Thus in a north country cottage the housewife moistens the oatmeal and kneads it into dough, which spread out thin is baked into oatcakes on the hot iron girdle (it used to be a hot stone); and the damper of the Australian colonist is as simply made with flour and water in thick cakes, baked in the embers. These take us back near the primitive stages of an art which almost more than any other has civilized mankind. Such unleavened bread being first in use, the invention of leavened bread would follow as a matter of course, by the sour dough on the uncleaned vessel fermenting into leaven (French levain, lightening), which starts fermentation through the fresh dough, disengaging bubbles of carbonic acid within it which expand it into a spongy mass. In later times the yeast from brewing was found to be a better means than leaven; and there are modern processes of introducing the gas by means of baking-powder (such as sal-aëratus or aërated salt, bicarbonate of soda), or the bread may be aërated by mixing the carbonic acid gas mechanically. The other great means of preparing farinaceous or starchy food is by boiling, which lets the starch out to mix with the water by bursting the tiny granules in which it is enclosed. Rice boiled whole furnishes about half the food of mankind, and among other staple articles of vegetable food are the various kinds of pap or porridge made with wheat, barley, oats, maize, sago, cassava, &c. Looking over a modern cookery-book, it is seen what an endless list of dishes and sauces have been contrived by clever cooks, to please the palate and make one wish for more. As to progress in cookery in this way, no doubt the moderns have left the ancients behind. But, after all, the main purpose of cooking food is to bring it into a proper condition for keeping up and working the human machine, body and mind. Examining it from this point of view, it is curious to notice what an old-world business it is. Its main processes of roasting, baking, and boiling, belong to the barbaric stage of culture, and had their origin in ages before history.

The liquors drunk by man may next be noticed. Savage tribes such as the Australians were water-drinkers when discovered by the Europeans, and even the Hottentots and North American Indians knew no fermented drinks. It is difficult to suppose that an indulgence so tempting would ever be forgotten, if once known; so that possibly the ancestors of these peoples may have from the first been ignorant of the art of fermenting liquor. But in most countries, especially where grain and fruit were cultivated, one would think that the process must sooner or later discover itself, by the accident of some suitable juice or mash being left to stand. In Mexico the milky juice of the aloe is fermented into pulque; in Asia and Africa palms are tapped for palm-wine or toddy; cider from apple-juice, and mead from honey and water, are well known; the Tatars ferment their mares’ milk into kumiss. Especially liquors of the beer kind prevail widely; the first mentioned in history is the beer brewed from barley by the ancient Egyptians, whence may perhaps be traced the ancient ale or beer of Europe; allied to it are the kvass or rye-beer of Russia, the pombe or millet-beer of Africa, the so-called rice-wine of the Chinese, the chicha made with maize or cassava by the natives of America. Wine seems not less ancient, and the Egyptian paintings show the vineyards, the wine-presses, the wine-jars; indeed, wine-making is still much what it was in those early ages of history. In ancient times it is curious to notice the frank undoubting delight of men in intoxicating drink, as a divinely given means of drowning care and stimulating dulness into wild joy. They drank it solemnly in their religious feasts and offered it to their gods. The ancient bards of the Vedic hymns thought no ill in singing of Indra the Heaven-god, reeling drunk with the libations of the sacred soma poured out by his worshippers, and in later ages the Greeks chanted in bacchanal processions the praises of the beneficent Dionysos, who made all nations happy with the care-dispelling juice of the grape. But in early times also there comes into view an opposite doctrine. The guardians of religion, sensible of the evil of drunkenness, begin to proclaim not only excess as hateful, but the very tasting of strong drink a sin. The Brahmans, although the libation of the soma remains by old tradition among their sacred rites, yet account the drinking of spirituous liquors one of the five great sins; while in the old rival religion of Buddha, one of the ten precepts or commandments which the novice promises to obey, is that forbidding the use of intoxicating liquor. Though the religion of Mohammed arose in great measure out of Judaism and Christianity, he cast off their ancient honour for wine and its use in sacred rites, forbidding it as an abomination. It was not till the middle ages that distilled spirit, though more ancient in the East, came into use among the western nations. It was generally accepted as beneficial, as is well seen in the name of “water of life,” Latin aquavitæ, French eau-de-vie, Irish usquebaugh (for shortness whisky). Alcoholic spirit is now produced in immense quantities from the refuse of wine-making, brewing, sugar-refining, &c. Its employment as a habitual stimulant is among the greatest evils of the modern world, bringing about in the low levels of the population a state of degradation hardly matched in the worst ages of history. On the other hand, modern civilized life has gained in comfort by taking to the use of warm slightly stimulant drinks. Tea, at first valued by the Buddhist monks in Central Asia as a drug to keep the ascetic awake for his nightly religious duties, seems to have been introduced as a beverage in China at about the Christian era, and has spread from thence all over the world. Coffee is at home in Arabia, and the world owes its general use to the Moslems. Chocolate was brought by the Spaniards from old Mexico, where it was a favourite drink. With these, mention has to be made of tobacco, also an importation from America, where at the time of the discovery it was smoked by natives of both the north and south continent.

In here describing fires and fire-places (p. 264), wood has been taken as the primitive fuel. Indeed, the fire of fallen boughs made at a picnic in the woods may take our minds fairly back to præhistoric life. When in the savage hut the logs are piled on the earthen floor, this simple hearth already becomes the gathering-place of the family and the type of home. But in treeless districts the want of fuel is one of the difficulties of life, as where on the desert plains the buffalo-hunter has to pick up for the evening fire the droppings which he calls “buffalo-chips” or “bois de vache.” Even in woodland countries, as soon as people collect in villages, the firewood near by is apt to run short. When some American Indians were asked what reason they supposed had brought the white men to their country, they answered quite simply that no doubt we had burnt up all our wood at home, and had to move. The guess was so far good, that something of the kind must really have happened had we depended on the fuel from our forests and peat-bogs, for the supply in England was giving out. Thus what was in old times the forest-land of Kent and Sussex, and has still kept its name of the Weald (i.e. wood), is not now well-timbered, but this is because in Queen Elizabeth’s time it had been stripped to make charcoal for the iron furnaces. Indeed, there then seemed danger that as population increased and manufactures throve, England might become like North China now, where in the cold weather people huddle at home wrapped in furs, fuel being too scarce except for the cooking-stove. But instead of this coming to pass, there took place an industrial change in England, which multiplied the population and brought on our present prosperity. This was the use of coal, on which our modern manufacturing system depends. Even for household purposes the coal-cellar has almost superseded the wood-stack, and the blazing yule-log has become a picturesque relic of the past. The very word coal, which in the English Bible keeps its original sense of burning wood, has since been usurped by the mineral. It must not, however, be supposed that the use of coal was only discovered in modern times. The Chinese have mined it from time immemorial. In the thirteenth century, the famous Venetian traveller, Marco Polo, related that in Cathay there is a kind of black stones, which are dug out of veins in the mountains, and burn like faggots; and I can tell you (he says) that if you put them on the fire in the evening so that they catch well, they will burn all night and even be alight in the morning. That this was told and received as a wonder in Europe, shows how unfamiliar the use of coal then was. Though lithanthrax or “stone-coal” was not unknown to the ancients, its full importance to modern life only came gradually into view. Having first been brought in for economy to meet the scarcity of wood, it afterwards became, when applied to the steam-engine, an almost boundless source of power for all mechanical work. A steam-engine, for every few shovelfuls of coal its furnace is fed with, will do the day’s work of a horse. Thus the yearly output of millions of tons of steam-coal in Great Britain alone, furnishes a supply of force in comparison with which what was formerly available from wind-mills and water-mills and the labour of men and beasts was quite small, while the workman’s task becomes more and more that of directing this brute force to grind and hammer, to spin and weave, to carry across land and sea. It is like the difference between driving the waggon and carrying the sacks of corn to market on one’s own back. It is an interesting problem in political economy to reckon the means of subsistence in our country during the agricultural and pastoral period, and to compare them with the resources we now gain from coal, in doing home-work and manufacturing goods to exchange for foreign produce. Perhaps the best means of realizing what coal is to us, will be to consider, that of three Englishmen now, one at least may be reckoned to live by coal, inasmuch as without it the population would have been so much less.

The Australian savage would catch up a blazing brand from the camp-fire, to light him into the dark forest and scare away the demons. Thus there is as yet no difference between his primitive means of artificial heat and light. The two begin to separate when resinous pine-splints or the like are set aside to serve as natural flambeaux, and from this the next step is to make artificial flambeaux, of which the commonest is the twist or torch (from Latin torquere) of oakum dipped in pitch or wax. Till this century we used torches much as the ancient Romans did, but they are now seldom to be seen, and by their disuse the picturesque side of life loses many striking effects of torchlight glare and shadow on banquet and procession—the delight of painters and poets. Not half the passers-by in old-fashioned streets now know that the extinguishers on the iron railings were to put out the links or torches carried to light the company to their coaches. The candle looks as though it might have been invented from the torch. The rushlight, made of the pith of the rush dipped in melted fat, was in common use in Pliny’s time, as was also the wax or tallow candle with its yarn wick. The old classic lamp was a flattish oval vessel with a nozzle (i.e., nostril) at one end for the wick to come out at. Simple as this construction is, it has had a long unchanged use. Museums have few Greek and Roman objects more plentiful than such earthenware lamps, nor more exquisite specimens of metal-work than the bronze ones; and to this day the traveller off the main road in Spain or Italy is lighted to his bedroom with a brass stand-lamp much after the manner of the ancients, with its pick-wick hanging to it by a chain. The lamp only came into its improved modern make about a century ago, when Argand let the air in from below, and put on the glass chimney to set up a draught. The gas-lamp is still later, only having come into practical use during the last sixty years. But it is curious to notice that natural gas-lighting had long been known in places where decomposing bituminous beds underground set free carburetted hydrogen. Thus at the famous fire-temples of Baku (west of the Caspian), a hollow cane was stuck in the ground near the altar, through which the gas rose and burnt at its mouth, while the pilgrim fire-worshippers prostrated themselves and adored the sacred flame. In China, at salt springs where such a supply of natural gas comes up, the practical-minded people are content to lay it on through bamboos into the buildings, to boil the brine-kettles and light up the works.

The examination here made of the modes of cooking requires some notice of vessels. For water-vessels men can make shift without the art of the potter, using joints of bamboo, coco-nut shells, calabash rinds, buckets scooped out of wood, pails of bark, bottles of skin. The horseman in desert regions carries his water-gourd at his saddle-bow, and even where a glass imitation has come in, the French go on calling it a gourde, just as we keep up the name of the old leather bottle for the glass ones we use now. It was one of the greatest household inventions to make earthen pots to stand the fire for boiling. When and where pottery was invented, is too far back to say. On the sites of ancient dwellings, wherever earthenware was in use, potsherds may be picked up in the ground. Where they are not to be found, as among the relics of tribes of the reindeer-period in the caves of France, it may be safely concluded that these early savages had not come so far in civilization. The same is true of the Australians, Fuegians, and many other modern savages who had no pottery, and no broken bits in their soil to show that their predecessors ever had. One asks, how did men first hit upon the idea of making an earthen pot? It may not look a great stretch of invention, but invention moved by slow steps in early culture, and there are some facts which lead to the guess that even pots were not made all at once. There are accounts of rude tribes plastering their wooden vessels with clay to stand the fire, while others, more advanced, moulded clay over gourds, or inside baskets, which being then burnt away left an earthen vase, and the marks of the plaiting remained as an ornamental pattern. It may well have been through such intermediate stages that the earliest potters came to see that they could shape the clay alone and burn it hard. This shaping was doubtless at first done by hand, as in America or Africa the native women may still be seen building up large and shapely jars or kettles from the bottom, moulding on the clay bit by bit. So in Europe, as any museum of antiquities shows, the funeral urns and other earthen vessels of the stone and bronze ages were hand-made; and even now tourists who visit the Hebrides buy earthen cups and bowls of an old woman who makes them in ancestral fashion without a potter’s wheel, and ornaments them with lines drawn with a pointed stick. Yet the potter’s wheel was known in the world from high antiquity. Fig. 73 represents Egyptian potters at work, as shown in the wall-paintings of the Tombs of the Kings. It is seen that they turned the wheel by hand. So the Hindu potter is described as now going down to the river side when a flood has brought him a deposit of fine clay, when all he has to do is to knead a batch of it, stick up his pivot in the ground, balance the heavy wooden table on the top, give it a spin round, and set to work. It was an improvement on this simplest wheel to work it from below by the foot, and in our potteries a labourer drives it with a wheel and band, but the principle remains unchanged. As we watch with untiring pleasure the potter with this simple machine so easily bringing shape out of shapelessness, we can well understand how in the ancient world it seemed the very type of creation, so that the Egyptians pictured one of their deities as a potter moulding Man on the wheel. Fine art made some of its earliest and most successful efforts in shaping the earthen vase, engraving and moulding patterns or figures on it, and painting it with pictures of gods and heroes, or scenes from myth or daily life, so that much of our knowledge of such nations as Etruscans and even Greeks is derived from the paintings on their vases, art-relics almost everlasting though so fragile. A great part of the pottery of the world is still of the first and simplest kind, mere baked clay (Italian terra cotta) without glaze like our flower-pots, and therefore porous. To cure this fault, some people, as the Peruvians, varnished it, while even the Greeks often burnt in bitumen. The great improvement of glazing, that is, melting on a glassy coating in the furnace, was already known in ancient Egypt and Babylonia, while in later ages glazed earthenware reached high artistic excellence in the Persian ware and the majolica (from Majorca). In China a more perfect ware had been made above a thousand years before European potters got at the secret of imitating it. We call it china, or by the curious name porcelain, which originally meant a kind of oriental nacre or mother-of-pearl. China or porcelain dishes are made of fine white kaolin or porcelain clay, and fired so intensely that the ware becomes vitrified not only at the glazed surface but through the substance. The common principle in all these varieties of earthenware is that silica (which with alumina is present in all clay) forms fusible glassy silicates, which in terra cotta bind the mass together, and in glazed earthenware and china coat it on the surface or through.

Glass itself is a fusible silicate of this kind, the base being potash, soda, and sometimes lead. There is a fanciful story told by Pliny, describing its invention as having taken place on a sandy shore of Phœnicia, where a ship happening to be moored, the merchants finding no stones to boil their kettle on, brought on shore lumps of nitre with which the ship happened to be laden, whereupon the fire melted the silica and alkali into glass. But the fact is that glass-making was an Egyptian art ages before the rise of Phœnician commerce, and to all appearance the Phœnicians and other nations learnt it from thence. Fig. 74 shows an Egyptian glass blower. Among other things he would have made flasks to be covered with reed, much like our present oil-flasks. The ancient Egyptians made glass beads, and variegated glass cups, which even the Venetian glassworks can hardly match. But modern Europe may claim the clever art of making crown glass for window-panes by twirling the red-hot blown globe till it opens in a circular sheet, and also the polishing of sheets of plate-glass, which make possible our great looking-glasses with their backs of brilliant tin amalgam.

Fire is so important a means in extracting metal from the ore and working it afterwards, that some account of the use of metal may properly come in this chapter. But in thinking how men were led to the difficult processes of smelting ores to extract the metal, it has to be remembered that some metals are found in the metallic state. Thus the native copper near Lake Superior was used in long-past ages by the tribes then living in the country, who treated bits of the metal as a kind of malleable stone, hammering it cold into hatchets, knives, and bracelets. The same is true of gold, natural nuggets of which can be beaten cold into ornaments. It is only a guess that metal-working may have begun in this simple way; still it seems a likely guess. Iron also is found in the metallic state, especially in the aerolites or meteoric stones which fall on the earth from time to time. Though in many of these the metal is apt to shiver to bits under the hammer, there is some meteoric and other native iron fit to be made into implements when heated white-hot in the forge, and it can even be to some extent worked cold. Some of the ores of metal are themselves so metallic-looking that the smith would attempt to work them in the fire, and this may have led to proper smelting. Thus magnetic iron ore not only looks like iron, but can be heated in the forge, and then and there hammered into such things as horse-shoes.

It is a question whether men first worked copper or iron. In classic times, indeed, people felt certain that bronze was in use before iron. This bronze is an alloy of copper with about a ninth of tin to harden it, what an English mechanic would now call “gun-metal.” An often-quoted line of Hesiod’s tells how the men of old worked in bronze when as yet black iron was not; and Lucretius, the Epicurean poet, taught that after the primitive time when men fought with sticks and stones, iron and bronze were discovered, but bronze was known before iron. However, the Greeks and Romans did not really remember very ancient times, and in some countries the use of iron was early. Egyptian and Babylonian inscriptions make mention of iron as well as copper. A piece of wrought iron taken out of the masonry of the great pyramid may be seen in the British Museum, and there are Egyptian pictures even showing the blue steel which the butcher had hanging at his side to sharpen his knife on. Now what is to be particularly noticed is that the Egyptians, though they thus had iron, mostly made their carpenters’ tools of bronze. Among the Homeric Greeks, the smiths knew of iron, and even of steel or steely iron, if one may judge so from the famous passage in the Odyssey (ix. 391), about the hissing of the axe as the smith dips it in the cold water to strengthen the iron. Yet all the while bronze was the ordinary material not only for the warrior’s armour and shield, but for his spear and sword. Clearly we have here a state of arts very unlike our own now, and it is worth while to try to understand the difference. An instructive remark in Kaempfer’s account of Japan near two centuries ago, may help to explain it, where he says that both copper and iron were smelted in the country, and were about the same price, so that iron tools cost as much as copper or brass ones. The state of things far back in the ancient world may have been something like this. Iron, though known, was hard to smelt from the ore, and Homer’s calling it the “much-wrought iron” shows how difficult the smiths found it to forge. But copper was plentiful, one well-known source being the island of Cyprus, whence its name of æs Cyprium (copper). Tin had not to be fetched from the ends of the world; there were mines in Georgia, Khorassan, and elsewhere in inner Asia, where perhaps the discovery was made of using it to harden copper into bronze. When once this had been hit upon, the ease with which bronze could be melted, and such things as hatchets cast in stone moulds, would make it more convenient than iron to the ancient artificer. This may have been the real reason why the “bronze age” set in over a great part of Europe and Asia, and was only followed by the “iron age” when iron coming to be better worked, cheaper and more plentiful, and steel especially being improved, brought out that superiority to bronze for tools and weapons which to us seems a matter of course. The remains of the lake-dwellings of Switzerland show how central Europe was once inhabited by rude tribes using stone implements, how at a later period bronze hatchets and spears prevailed, and lastly iron came in. Such, too, has been the history of the stone, bronze, and iron ages, traced by archæologists in the burial-places of old Scandinavia, whether the use of the new metals was learnt by the native nations or brought in by conquering invaders. Nations living in the bronze age are known to history, especially the Mexicans and Peruvians, whom the Spaniards at the conquest found working in bronze with some skill, but knowing nothing of iron; their state was like that of the Massagetæ of central Asia, described by Herodotus some two thousand years earlier. Most of Africa, on the other hand, seems to have had no bronze age, but to have passed directly from the stone age to the iron age. Iron-smelting seems to have come into Africa in the north, and only spread lately down to the Hottentots, who still remember in their stories the time when their ancestors used to cut down trees with stones. The Africans easily dig up their rich iron ore and smelt it with wood in simple furnaces which may be mere holes in the ground, the draught being generally by bellows. The primitive pair of bellows may there be seen, made of whole skins of goats or other animals, of which the one full of air is pressed or trodden on, while the empty one is pulled up to fill itself through a slit or valve. This shows iron-smelting not far from its rudest and probably earliest state. Among the various improvements which have now made iron more plentiful than in ancient times are the use of coke instead of charcoal for smelting; the introduction of cast-iron, which seems old in China, but was not common in England till the last century; the use of machinery for rolling and forging. The progress of steel-making has been such as lately to make it possible for railways to be laid down with steel at a penny a pound.

Other metals and their effect on civilization may be spoken of briefly. Silver has from ancient times been the companion of gold, as precious metals. Lead was easily extracted, and served the Romans for roofs and water-pipes. The alloy of copper and zinc was made by the Romans not by fusing together the two metals, but by heating copper with the zinc ore called calamine; the result was brass, an inferior kind of bronze. Quicksilver was known to the ancients, who distilled it from the red cinnabar, and understood its use in extracting gold and silver, and for gilding. Of the many metals which have become known in modern times some have practical uses. Thus platinum is valuable for vessels which have to bear extreme heat or resist the action of acids, and aluminium is useful for its remarkable lightness. But we still mostly depend on the metals whose origin is lost in antiquity—iron, copper, tin, lead, silver, and gold.

The mention of these last precious metals leads us to notice the important part which coin has had in developing civilization, and this again belongs to the general history of trade or commerce. The modern Englishman, accustomed to shops and counting-houses, hardly realises from what rude beginnings our complex commercial system arose. It is instructive to see trade in its lowest form among such tribes as the Australians. The tough greenstone, valuable for making hatchets, is carried hundreds of miles by natives who receive from other tribes in return the prized products of their districts, such as red ochre to paint their bodies with; they have even got so far as to let peaceful traders pass unharmed through tribes at war, so that trains of youths might be met, each lad with a slab of sandstone on his head to be carried to his distant home and shaped into a seed-crusher. When strangers visit a tribe, they are received at a friendly gathering or corrobboree, and presents are given on both sides. No doubt there is a general sense that the gifts are to be fair exchanges, and if either side is not satisfied there will be grumbling and quarrelling. But in this roughest kind of barter we do not yet find that clear notion of a unit of value which is the great step in trading. This higher stage is found among the Indians of British Columbia, whose strings of haiqua-shells, worn as ornamental borders to their dresses, serve them also as currency to trade with, a string of ordinary quality being reckoned as worth one beaver’s skin. In the Old World many traces have come down of the times when value was regularly reckoned in cattle; as where in the Iliad, in the description of the funeral games, we read of the great prize tripod that was valued at twelve oxen, while the female slave who was the second prize was only worth four oxen. Here the principle of unit of value is already recognised, for not only could the owner of oxen buy tripods and slaves with them, but also he who had a twelve-ox tripod to sell could take in exchange three slaves reckoned at four oxen each. To this day various objects of use or ornament pass as currency, especially where money is scarce. Thus the traveller in Abyssinia may have to buy what he wants with cakes of salt, while elsewhere in Africa he has to carry iron hoe-blades, pieces of cloth, and strings of beads as money. Cowry-shells are still small change in South Asia, as they have been since time immemorial. These things do more or less clumsily what metal money does so conveniently. The use of money arose out of gold and silver being in old times bartered by weight for goods, as may be seen in the pictures of the ancient Egyptians weighing in scales heaps of rings of gold and silver, which shows that these were not yet real money. It is thus still with much of the gold and silver traded with in the East, where the little ingots have to be weighed and reckoned for what each is worth. The invention of coin comes in when pieces of metal are made of a fixed weight and standard, and marked with a figure or inscription to certify them, so that they may be taken without weighing or testing. This looks a simple thing to do, but the old Egyptians and Babylonians are not known to have hit upon it. Perhaps the earliest money may have been the Chinese little marked cubes of gold, and the pieces of copper in the shapes of shirts and knives, as though intended to represent real shirts or knives. Coins appear in Lydia and Ægina, in their early form, as rude dumps of precious metal stamped on one side only with a symbol such as the tortoise, the other side showing the mark of the anvil or tool they were placed on to be struck, which accidental back-pattern came to be improved in later coins into the ornamental reverse. Art came on fast in coinage, so that among the most beautiful coins in the world are the gold staters of Philip of Macedon, with the laurel-crowned head on one side and the two-horse chariot on the other. But one reason why coins are no longer struck in such high relief is because they would be rubbed down by wear. The Roman as was not stamped but cast; it seems to have been at first a pound of copper, its name meaning “one” (as ace at cards still does). From early ages the coinage has been a government monopoly, and the practice soon began of lowering the standard and lessening the weight for the profit of the royal treasury. How this debasing the coinage was carried on in Europe by one king after another may be seen in the fact that the libra or pound of silver came down in value to the French livre or franc, worth tenpence, and to the “pound Scots,” worth twenty pence. Though changed in value, the coinage of old times may be traced on to the present day, in our still keeping accounts in the £ s. d. (libræ, solidi, denarii) of the Romans.

For small trading and at home, metal money answers well. But there is great trouble and risk in sending coin hundreds of miles to pay for goods bought at a distance. An easily carried substitute for gold and silver is the bank-note, a promise to pay so much, issued by the treasury or some banker, and passing as money from hand to hand. The Emperor of China appears to have issued such notes in exchange for treasure about the eighth century, and in the thirteenth century Marco Polo, the famous merchant-traveller in Tartary, describes the Great Khan’s money of stamped pieces of mulberry-bark. It is plain from this account that the notion of paper-money was still strange to the mind of an European trader, but since then bank-notes have become an important part of the world’s currency. Even more useful to commerce was the invention of bills of exchange. Suppose a merchant of Genoa to have sent silks to a merchant in London. He does not send for his money in return, but gives an order on a slip of paper that his correspondent in London, who owes him so much, is to pay it in so many days. This slip of paper is a bill of exchange, and is bought by another Genoese merchant who happens to owe money in London, and pays it by sending over the bill which claims the payment of the money there. Thus, instead of gold being sent backwards and forwards to pay for shipments between London and Genoa, one debt is set off against another. This is describing in its simplest form the system which is so worked in the exchanges of mercantile cities all over the world, that the immense transactions of commerce are carried on by mutual credit, with only so much actual travelling of gold and silver as is necessary to adjust the balances between the different countries.

The main principle of modern commerce is still just what it was among the rude Indians of Brazil, where the tribes who make the deadly arrow-poison prepare more than they want for their own use, so as to exchange the rest for spears of the hard wood that grows in other districts, or the hammocks of palm-fibre netted by tribes elsewhere. Wealth is created by trade as well as by manufactures. The Canadian trapper wants for his own use but few of his plentiful furs, but all he can take are wealth to him, because the trader brings him in exchange the clothes and groceries and other things he wants. The general history of commerce in the world, which is the development of this simple principle, need not be dwelt on here by giving details of the ancient traffic of Egypt with Assyria and India, the Phoenician trading colonies on the Mediterranean, the old trade-routes across Asia and Europe, the rise of the merchant princes of Genoa and Venice, the first voyages round the Cape to the East Indies, the discovery of America, the rise of ocean steam-navigation. It is specially interesting to the student of civilization to notice that the travelling merchant had in early ages another business hardly less important than conveying ivory and incense and fine linen from where they were plentiful to where they were scarce. He was the bringer of foreign knowledge and the explorer of distant regions in days when nations were more shut up than now within their own borders, or went across them only as enemies to ravage and destroy. The merchants did much to break down the everlasting jealousy and strife between nations into peaceful and profitable intercourse. Moreover it may be plainly proved that the old hostile system of nations is kept up by every kind of restriction on trade, every protective duty imposed to force the production of commodities in countries ill-suited to them, to prevent their coming in cheap and good from where they are raised with least labour. There is no agent of civilization more beneficial than the free trader, who gives the inhabitants of every region the advantages of all other regions, and whose business is to work out the law that what serves the general profit of mankind serves also the private profit of the individual man.