Page:Firemaking Apparatus in the U.S. National Museum.djvu/35

 FlRt: MAKING APPARATUS. In the preliminary report, Mr. Holm gives the time at almost less than half a miunte. It was made by the Eskimo, Illinguaki, and his wife, who, on being presented with a box of matches, gave np their drill, saying that they had no farther use for it. In the same report Mr. Holm gives an interesting note. He says : This fire apparatus is certainly better developed thau that which has been de- scribed and drawn by Nordenskiold from the Chukcbis (Voy. of tlic Vega, ii, p. r2(>). The principle is the same as the Greenlander's drill, which they em[)loy for makinj; holes in wood and bone, and which is furnislicd with a bow and month-piece.* ((ig. (Aiigmansalik Eskimo, E. Grpeiilnnd. G. Holin's Ktlii tk of AngiiKiR.-ialikerne. ) The central holes of this hearth are worthy of note, occurring in the farthest eastern locality of the P^skimo, and in Labrador. Western Greenland. — The material in the Museum from western Greenland is very scanty. The southern coast has been settled for so long a time that the Eskimo and many of their arts have almost be- come extinct. No view of fire-making in Greenland would be complete without Davis's quaint description of it, made three hundred years ago, but it was the u[)per end of the spindle that was wet in Trane. A Greenlander "begaune to kindle a tire in this manner: He tooke a I)iece of a boord wherein was a hole half thorow ; into that hole he puts the end of a round sticke like unto a bedstalfe, wetting the end thereof in Trane, and in a fashion of a turner with a piece of lether, bj^ his violent motion doeth very speedily produce fire."t Eskimo graves and village sites yield evidence also that the fire- making tools were not different from those at present used higher north along the coast, and on the east coast. what would be inferred from the development of these inventions, t Hakluyt Society, m, p. 104.
 * Danish Umiak Expedition. Preliminary Report, p. 208. This seems scarcely