ARTS OF LIFE—(_concluded_).
Fire, 260—Cookery, 264—Bread, &c., 266—Liquors, 268—Fuel,
270—Lighting, 272—Vessels, 274—Pottery, 274—Glass, 276—Metals,
277—Bronze and Iron Ages, 278—Barter, 281—Money, 282—Commerce,
285.
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.
[Illustration: FIG. 72.—Bushman drilling fire (after Chapman).]
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.
[Illustration: FIG. 73.—Ancient Egyptian Potter’s Wheel (Beni Hassan).]
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.
[Illustration: FIG. 74.—Ancient Egyptian Glass-blowing (Beni Hassan).]
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.