A small Malayan bellows, called “op-op’,” the exact duplicate in miniature of the double tubular bellows described in the preceding section on “metal weapons,” furnishes the draught for a small charcoal fire.  The funnel of the clay mold is filled with pieces of metal, and the entire thing is buried in the fired charcoal.  In fifteen minutes the metal melts and runs down through the gate at the bottom of the funnel into the hollow, wax-lined mold.  Since the entire mold is hot, the metal does not cool or harden promptly, and the pipe maker taps and jars the mold in order to make the metal penetrate and fill every part.

The mold is set aside to cool and is then broken away from the metal core.  To-day the pipe maker possesses a file with which to smooth and clean the crude pipe.  Formerly all that labor, and it is extensive, was performed with stones.

It requires two men to make the “anito” pipes —­ tin-ak-ta’-go.  One superintends all the work and performs the finest of it, and the second pumps the bellows and smooths and cleans the pipe after it is cast.  The two men make four pipes per day, but the purchaser of an “anito” pipe puts days of toil on the metal, smoothing and perfecting it by cleaning and digging out the design until it becomes really a beautiful bit of primitive art.

When a pueblo wants a few tin-ak-ta’-go it sends for the manufacturer, and he comes to the pueblo with his helper and remains as long as necessary.  Ay-o’-na, of Genugan, annually visits Titipan, Ankiling, Sagada, Bontoc, and Samoki.  He usually furnishes all material, and receives a peseta for each pipe, but the pueblo furnishes the food.  In this way a pipe maker is a journeyman about half the year.

Tukukan makes a smooth, cast-metal pipe, called “pin-e-po-yong’,” and Baliwang makes tubular iron pipes at her smithies.  They are hammered out and pounded and welded over a core.  I have seen several of such excellent workmanship that the welded seam could not be detected on the surface.

In the western part of the area both men and women smoke, and some smoke almost constantly.  Throughout the areas occupied by Christians children of 6 or 7 years smoke a great deal.  I have repeatedly seen girls not over 6 years of age smoking rolls of tobacco, “cigars,” a foot long and more than an inch in diameter, but in Bontoc area small children do not smoke.  In most of the area women do not smoke at all, and boys seldom smoke until they reach maturity.

In Bontoc the tobacco leaf for smoking is rolled up and pinched off in small sections an inch or so in length.  These pieces are then wrapped in a larger section of leaf.  When finished for the pipe the tobacco resembles a short stub of a cigar.  Only half a dozen whiffs are generally taken at a smoke, and the pipe with its tobacco is then tucked under the edge of the pocket hat.  Four pipes in five as they are seen sticking from a man’s hat show that the owners stopped smoking long before they exhausted their pipes.