places in the countrey else." Harriot speaks further of "the small
charge for the labour and feeding of men; the infinite store of wood;
the want of wood and the deerness thereof in England." It was before the
day of coal and coke, or of any of the processes known now. The iron
mines of Roanoke Island were never heard of again.

Iron-ore in the colonies is again heard of in the history of Jamestown,
in 1607. A ship sailed from there in 1608 freighted with "iron-ore,
sassafras, cedar posts and walnut boards." Seventeen tons of iron were
made from this ore, and sold for four pounds per ton. This was the first
iron ever made from American ores. The first iron-works ever erected in
this country were, of course almost, burned by the Indians, in 1622, and
in connection three hundred persons were killed.

[Illustration: EARLY SMELTING IN AMERICA.]

Fire and blood was the end of the beginning of many American industries.
Ore was plentiful, wood was superabundant, methods were crude. They
could easily excel the Virginia colonists in making iron in Persia and
India at the same date. The orientals had certain processes, descended
to them from remote times, discovered and practiced by the first
metal-workers that ever lived. The difference in the situation now is
that here the situation and methods have so changed that the story is
almost incredible. There, they remain as always. The first instance of
iron-smelting in America is a text from which might be taken the entire
vast sermon of modern industrial civilization.

The orientals lacked the steam-engine. So did we in America. The blast
was impossible everywhere except by hand, and contrivances for this
purpose are of very great antiquity. The bellows was used in Egypt three