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For ordinary experience shows us on all sides that the operative cause and the material cause are quite distinct: we invariably have on the one side clay, gold, and other material substances which form the material causes of pots, ornaments, and so on, and on the other hand, distinct from them, potters, goldsmiths, and so on, who act as operative causes.
At the average price of 5 centavos about the equivalent of 1,200 pesos come to the pueblo annually from this art, or about 40 pesos for each of the thirty potters, whether or not she works at her art. A few years ago, during a severe state of feud, Samoki pots increased in value about thirty-fold; it is said that the potters purchased carabao for ten large ollas each.
It is seen that potters, weavers, &c., who produce jars, cloth, and the like, are incapable of actually producing unless they make use of certain implements, although they may fully possess the specially required skill. Men destitute of such skill are not capable of production, even with the help of implements; those having the capacity produce by means of the instruments only.
It is fertile in minerals, chalks, potters' clay of the finest quality, and other valuable natural productions; but, on account of the jealous nature of the inhabitants, which deters foreigners from settling there, these productions are not made so available or profitable as they otherwise might be.
This set me to study how to order my fire, so as to make it burn some pots. I had no notion of a kiln, such as the potters burn in, or of glazing them with lead, though I had some lead to do it with; but I placed three large pipkins and two or three pots in a pile, one upon another, and placed my fire-wood all round it, with a great heap of embers under them.
In the intervals between three of these there are branched bodies representing plants or bushes. Snakes and other reptilian forms were represented by the ancient potters in the decoration of food bowls, and it is remarkable how closely some of these correspond in symbolism with conceptions still current in Tusayan.
But nothing like the sort of clay used by potters had been seen, and they were obliged to give up that thought and content themselves with roasting or broiling their food.
Not far away is a fairly recent though prehistoric lava flow. It occurs to me that possibly this flow destroyed some of the clay beds from which the ancient potters got their precious material. The temple may have been erected as a propitiatory offering to the god of volcanoes in the hope that the anger which had caused him to send the lava flow might be appeased.
I did not buy the candles, but she did; and while I silently thanked a Higher Power, and the ta-tas burned to her deity, she informed me that my countryman, the prodigal, had been carried to the "potters' field." Not all prodigals reach home again; some are buried by the swine-troughs.
The city's wagons raked the little black coffins up and dumped them into the Potters' Field, one on top of the other, like so many dead flies. Down every tenement-walled street the white ribbons fluttered their tragic story from cellar to attic.
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