And Mexicans.

255

Chap. 2.]

monuments of Egypt (those of Beni Hassan) the latter are represented inthe remote age of Osirtasen, 1700 B. C. which to a superficial observermight lead to the supposition that the former were then unknown; but aclose examination of the sculptures shows the fallacy of such a conclusion,since blowing tubes are also figured long after the reign of Thothmes inwhose time bellows were certainly common. 1 Again, on the last day ofthe feast of Tabernacles, the Jews were allowed by rabbinical preceptsto light one fire from another, but not to strike new fire from stone ormetal, nor to quench it, although to save their goods, “ nor to blow it withbellowes, but with a reede.” b Now a stranger, having an imperfect know-ledge of Jewish customs, upon witnessing fires thus blown would, in sorneparts of the World, be very apt to conclude that they had no bellows. Andagain, if we had not a proof' that our domestic bellows was known to theRomans, we might have inferred from Pliny ’s account of statuaries andpainters representing individuals blowing fires with their mouths, that artifi-cial instruments for the purpose were then unknown.

Enough may be gathered from early writers on America to accountfor bellows not being employed in those operations in which they wouldseem to have been most required, viz : in smelting of metals. Accordingto Acosta, some ores could not be reduced by bellows, but only by airfurnaces. Garcilasso, in the last chapter of the eighth book of his Com-mentaries, makes the same remark. In smelting the silver ore of Potosi,he says the Indians used neither bellows nor blowing tubes, but a naturalwind, which, in their opinion, was the best; they therefore fused the orein small furnaces placed on the hills in the night time, whenever the windwas sufficient for the purpose; and it was a pleasant sight, he observes,“ to behold eight, ten, or twelve thousand of those fires at the same time,ranged in Order upon the sides of the mountains.” The Spaniards suspect-ing that the metal, when thus diffused among a great number of hands,might be more readily purloined, and that mucb of it was wasted in somany fires, introduced blast furnaces, the fires in which were urged “bylarge bellows,” but these not succeeding, (the blast being too strong,) theyhad recourse to rotary bellows, (“ engines with wheels, carried about withsails like a windmill which fanned and blowed the fire,”) but these alsofailed to aceomplish the purpose, “ so that the Spaniards despairing of thesuccess of their inventions, made use of those which the Indians had framedand contrived.” No stronger reason could be adduced why the bellowswas not previously used in the reduction of ores.

At a subsequent fusion of the metal in their dwellings, the workmen(says Garcilasso) instead of bellows, continued to use blowing tubes,“though our [Spanish ] invention of bellows is much more easie and forci-ble to raise the fire.” Supposing they were ignorant of bellows before thearrival of the Spaniards, here is a proof that after they became acquaintedwith these instruments, they still preferred their tubes, as the gold andsilver smiths of Asia generally do at this day; and hence the use of suchtubes does not show, as has been stated, “ that they were unacquaintedwith the use of bellows.”

If there was nothing eise to adduce m favor of the old Peruvians beingacquainted with bellows, or with the principle of their construction and ap-plication, than the balsas or blown floats which their fishermen and thoseof Chili used instead of boats, we should deem them sufficient. Thesewere large bags made of skins of the sea wolf and filled with air. They

1 Wilkinson’s Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians, iii. 339. b Purehas’Pilgrimage, 223.