Page:Researches into the Early History of Mankind and the Development of Civilization.djvu/245

Rh account of the monstrous men he had met with on his travels, the men with four eyes, the men with eyes under their arm-pits, the men with long tails, and the men whose ears were so big that they covered their bodies; so nearly has the modern African kept to the wonder-tales that were current in the time of Pliny.

An unquestionable account of a fireless tribe would be of the highest interest to the ethnographer, proving, as it would do, a great step forward made by the races who can produce fire, for this is an art which, once learnt, could hardly be lost. But when we see that stories of such tribes have been set up again and again without any sound basis, while further information, when brought to bear on a series of such stories, tells against them so far as it goes, we are hardly warranted in trusting others of the same kind just because we have no means of testing them. A cause is required for the appearance of such stories in the world, but it does not follow that this cause must be the real existence of fireless tribes; a mere belief in their existence will answer the purpose, and this belief is known to have been current for ages, especially coming out in the Prometheus-legends of various regions of the world. Experience shows how such an idea, when once fairly afloat, will assert itself from time to time in stories furnished with place, date, and circumstance. It must be remembered, too, that the fireless men form only one of a number of races mentioned by writers, old and new, as being distinguished by the want of something which man usually possesses, who have no language, no names, no idea of spiritual beings, no dreams, no mouths, no heads, or no noses, but whose real existence more accurate knowledge has by no means tended to confirm.

In connexion with the stories of fireless tribes, some accounts of a kind of transitional state may be mentioned here. Mr. Backhouse was told by a native of Van Diemen's Land, that his ancestors had no means of making fire before their acquaintance with Europeans. They got it first from the sky, and preserved it by carrying firebrands about with them, and if these went out, they looked for the smoke of the fire of some