The Hiltons note their discovery of an old skin bellows in Salalah: "The bellows were hanging, blackened and neglected, on the wall of a blacksmith's shop. The blacksmith told us that they had been used by his father, his father's father, and so on back twenty-four generations (an estimated six hundred years). We had never seen a bellows like them before; they were not the pump type, like European bellows, but were more like an accordion. The neck of the tanned goatskin was tied around a wooden coupling tube that fit into an iron neck which would, naturally, have been placed under a fire. It reminded me of a clay pipe dated 1,000 B.C. that we had seen in the Israel Museum in Jerusalem . . . We were impressed that it really worked well; and we mentally wondered how this bellows differed, if any, from Nephi's." [Lynn M. and Hope A. Hilton, "In Search of Lehi's Trail, Part 2: The Journey," in The Ensign, October 1976, pp. 41-42]
1 Nephi 17:11 I Nephi did make a bellows wherewith to blow the fire, of the skins of beasts ([Illustration]): This goatskin bellows is said to be hundreds of years old. When Nephi made "a bellows wherewith to blow the fire, of the skins of beasts" (1 Nephi 17:11), it may well have looked like this. [Lynn M. and Hope A. Hilton, "In Search of Lehi's Trail, Part 2: The Journey," in The Ensign, October 1976, p. 37]