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I was 30 miles distant when I heard of this tiger, and I immediately directed our course towards Bhundra. It was a pretty and interesting place, where the presence of rich hematite iron ore has from time immemorial induced a settlement of smelters.
All day in the street you could hear men talking of veins, and smelters and dips and deposits and faults, the town hummed with it like a geology class on examination day. And there were men about the hotels with mining outfits and theodolites and dunnage bags, and at Smith's bar they would hand chunks of rock up and down, some of which would run as high as ten drinks to the pound.
We boys all became smelters, and for a very good reason. There was a market for soft solder; we could dispose of it without difficulty; we could in this way put money in our purse and experience the glorious emotion awakened by the spirit of independence.
Meanwhile, the train wound in and out among the mountains, stopping for a few moments at a small town where huge smelters were pouring forth their clouds of dense smoke, darkening the air until it seemed more like night than day; then on a few miles farther, to the little station known as the "Y," so-called on account of the form of the spur tracks owned by the mining company, by which the ore was brought down from the mines above.
In these experiments, the sulphur contained in the bottom of the crucible was always colored black by the separation of charcoal from the oil, and it was necessary to purify it by distillation beforehand. Of this, however, the smelters at Leyte made no mention, and they even had no apparatus for the purpose, while their sulphur was of a pure yellow color.
But when these had served their purpose a thing happened. One fine morning it was whispered on 'Change that Chiawassee iron would not Bessemer, and that Chiawassee coke had been rejected by the Southern Association of Iron Smelters.
By trade he was a railroad man. He had been heard to remark on one occasion that he had begun as a brakeman, but there were rumors of adventurous days before he became a member of a train crew. It was said that he had gone prospecting into Mexico as a youth, and that he had spent years working at ends and odds of jobs about mines and smelters.
The Cornish ores are sold, as we have seen, in the locality in which they are produced; but all these foreign ores, from whatever quarter they may come, are disposed of to the smelters in Swansea by public ticketing. This ticketing is a curious and characteristic feature of the trade.
It is evident from the shore line still to be observed on the adjacent hills, that in ancient times these were really lakes, and the traditional names thus preserved are only another evidence of the general desiccation which Africa has undergone. The Steamer in difficulties Elephant hunting Arrival at Chibisa's Search for Lake Nyassa The Manganja country Weavers and smelters Lake Pamalombe.
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