Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 26.djvu/110

100 oblique. It costs a great deal of trouble to teach a servant even to put a chair straight against the wall. If his attention is called to the fact that things are not in order, he will at once proceed to make them more crooked and askew than they were before. It is almost impossible to teach them European trades like that of the carpenter, in which straight lines are essential; but they succeed well in giving symmetrical forms to any rounded or free handwork.

The making and use of fire may be regarded as one of the primitive arts of mankind. Like the ancients, the Damaras regard fire as something handed down from their ancestors, to be carefully preserved. Every Herero werst has its sacred fire, which must never be extinguished, and which is considered the central point of the tribe and the village. There is the chief's own place, the sacred objects are kept by the fire, councils are held and judgments are delivered at it, the venerable ceremonial acts are consummated with its ashes, and from it are taken the coals with which fires are kindled in other houses. Those who go out with the herds to the cattle-stands take with them a brand from the sacred fire; and when a chief dies without direct heirs, or when the sovereignty passes to another line, then the old fire is put out and new fire is brought from the werst of the new chief. All the members of a single family or tribe regard themselves as sitting around one fire.

The care of the fire is intrusted to the oldest unmarried daughter of the chief, or, if he has no such daughter, to the maiden nearest related to him. If, by any accident or misfortune, it is extinguished, it must not be relit from another fire, but must be made anew from the beginning. For this purpose two straight sticks of any readily burning wood are taken. A hollow is made in one of the sticks, in which the sharpened end of the other one may be twirled, and some punk or half-rotten wood is put in a groove cut to hold it, to serve as tinder. This stick is held to the ground by the knees, while the other one is turned rapidly back and forth between the open hands. When a spark appears, it is directed upon the tinder, which is then readily blown into a flame. Thus, it is not the rubbed stick, but the tinder, that gives the flame. The natives dislike this work very much, and when on a journey, if they have no other fire apparatus, they take an ignited stick with them, the fire of which they skillfully keep glowing for a long time. At the present time, the Africans, far into the interior, are acquainted with the use of steel and flint and of matches; Jonkoping's paraffine-lighters have probably penetrated farther into the heart of Africa than any European explorer. There is no evidence that the people knew anything of the steel and flint before they became acquainted with Europeans; and I have never seen a fire-steel that was made by a native smith. Besides cooking food and warming and lighting the huts, fire is employed for the felling of large trees and the splitting of stones. In the former case, the fire is built around