an to
forge for his use in war. A bold leader arose among them, who
persuaded the ironworkers that the arms which they forged for their
masters might in their own hands become the instruments of freedom.
Sallying forth from their mountains, they set up their standard, and
their weapons soon freed them. For centuries after, the Turkish nation
continued to celebrate the event of their liberation by an annual
ceremony, in which a piece of iron was heated in the fire, and a
smith's hammer was successively handled by the prince and his nobles.

We can only conjecture how the art of smelting iron was discovered.
Who first applied fire to the ore, and made it plastic; who discovered
fire itself, and its uses in metallurgy? No one can tell. Tradition
says that the metal was discovered through the accidental burning of a
wood in Greece. Mr. Mushet thinks it more probable that the discovery
was made on the conversion of wood into charcoal for culinary or
chamber purposes. "If a mass of ore," he says, "accidentally dropped
into the middle of the burning pile during a period of neglect, or
during the existence of a thorough draught, a mixed mass, partly earthy
and partly metallic, would be obtained, possessing ductility and
extension under pressure. But if the conjecture is pushed still
further, and we suppose that the ore was not an oxide, but rich in
iron, magnetic or spicular, the result would in all probability be a
mass of perfectly malleable iron. I have seen this fact illustrated in
the roasting of a species of iron-stone, which was united with a
considerable mass of bituminous matter. After a high temperature had
been excited in the interior of the pile, plates of malleable iron of a
tough and flexible nature were formed, and under circumstances where
there was no fuel but that furnished by the ore itself." [9]

The metal once discovered, many attempts would be made to give to that
which had been the effect of accident a more unerring result. The
smelting of ore in an open heap of wood or charcoal being found tedious
and wasteful, as well as uncertain, would naturally lead to the
invention of a furnace; with the object of keeping the ore surrounded
as much as possible with fuel while the process of conversion into iron
was going forward. The low conical furnaces employed at this day by
some of the tribes of Central and Southern Africa, are perhaps very
much the same in character as those adopted by the early trib