Page:Researches into the Early History of Mankind and the Development of Civilization.djvu/239



are a number of stories, old and new, of tribes of man- kind living in ignorance of the art of fire-making. Such a state of things is indeed usually presupposed by the wide- spread legends of first fire-makers or fire-bringers, and Plutarch, in his essay on the question "Whether water or fire is the more useful?" gives a typical view of the matter. Fire was invented, as they say, by Prometheus, and our life shows that this was not a poetic fiction. For there are some races of men who live without fire, houseless, hearthless, and dwelling in the open air. The modern point of view is, however, very different from Plutarch's, and when the mention of a fireless race appears in company with a Prometheus, mythology, not history, claims it. The mere assertion that in a certain place a race is, or was, to be found living without fire is more difficult to deal with. In examining a collection of such statements, it is well to pay particular attention to the modern ones, on which collateral evidence may be brought to bear.

What is known of the native civilization of the Canary Islands, the making of pottery, the cooking in underground ovens, the use of the fire-drill, leaves no doubt that the Guanches knew how to produce and use fire at the time of the European expeditions in the 14th and 15th centuries. Yet Antonio Galvano, writing his treatise about the middle of the sixteenth century, declares that "in times past they ate raw meat, for want of fire." Farther on in the same book he has another story of a fireless people. In 1529, Alvaro de Saavedra, returning from the Moluccas toward the Pacific coast of Mexico,