Page:Firemaking Apparatus in the U.S. National Museum.djvu/64

 576 REPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1888. on Greenland, Cranz and Egede, though they carefully note and de- scribe the plan by wood-boring. Later explorers going higher north in western Greenland have found it. Dr. Emil Bessels, writing about the Itah Eskimo of Smith Sound, says: The catkins of the arctic willow are used as tindor to catch the sparks which have been produced through the grinding of two pieces of stone.^ Dr. E. K. Kane gives a more complete account from nearly the same locality, the Arctic Highlands of northwest Greenland. He says that the Eskimo of Anoatok struck fire from two stones, one a plain piece of angular milky quartz, held in the right hand, the other apparently an oxide of iron [pyrites or iron ore!] They were struck together after the true tinder-box fashion, throwing a scanty supply of sparks on a tinder composed of the silky down of the willow catkins {Salix lanata) which he held on a lump of dried moss.t Very much farther west on Melville Peninsula Parry gives a com- plete and interesting description of the primitive way. This account gives us a link between the western and eastern Eskimo. He writes: For the purpose of obtaining fire, the Eskimo use two lumps of common pyrites, from which sparks are struck into a little leathern case (see fig. 25, pi. lxxiv) contain- ing moss well dried and rubbed between the bauds. If this tinder does not readily catch, a small quantity of the white doss of the seed of the ground willow is laid above the moss. As soon as a spark has caught it is gently blown till the fire has spread an inch around, when the pointed end of a piece of wick being applied, it soon bursts into a flame, the whole process having occupied perhaps two or three minutes, t The Museum was in possession of a specimen catalogued, "Moss- bag and lumps of pyrites used by Innuit for getting fire," collected by Capt. C. F. Hall at Pelly Bay, in latitude 69^, longitude 90°, several degrees west of Melville Peninsula. The onl> other record of tlie process under consideration among the Eskimo is found in the Aleutian Islands. There is absolutely no evi- dence had by the writer that the Eskimo south of Kotzebue Sound (Western Eskimo) use the pyrites and flint for making fire. The latest information about the Aleutian Islanders is given in a manuscript of the careful explorer, Mr. Lucien M. Turner. His observation will serve to explain the description of striking a light by earlier travelers. They use the four part drill but they also use pyrites. A stone containing quartz and pyrites is struck against another similar one, or a beach pebble, into a mass of sea bird down sprinkled with powdered sulphur. This ignites and is quickly caught on finely shredded blades of grass or beaten stalks of wild parsnips. This method prevails to this day on the islands west of Uualashka. The people told Mr. Turner that this was the ancient way. There is a doubt in the writer's mind that Sauer's (Billing's Expedition, page 50), and Campbell's (Y^J^^**? P^t?^ ♦^*-^) observations, brought together by Bancroft,§ were accurate with regard to the stones used. All the t Kane. — Arctic Explorations, i, p. 379. X Parry. — Second Voyage. London, 1824. p. 504. Bancroft.— Native Races of the Pacific States, i, p. 91.
 * Die amerikanische Nordpol-Expedition. Leipzig, 1879. p. 358,