Page:Researches into the Early History of Mankind and the Development of Civilization.djvu/254

244 stones are attached, so as to exert pressure and perform the office of a fly-wheel. The requisite rotatory motion is given to the stick by two strings pulled alternately." There must of course be some means of keeping the spindle upright. The New Zealanders do not seem to have used their drill for fire-making as well as for boring, but to have kept to their stick-and-groove.

To substitute for the mere thong or cord a bow with a loose string, is a still further improvement, for one hand now does the work of two in driving the spindle. The centre, in which its end turns, may be held down with the other hand, or (as is very usual), set against the breast of the operator. The bow- drill thus formed, is a most ancient and well-known boring instrument, familiar to the artisan in modern Europe as it was in ancient Egypt. The only place where I have found any notice of its use for fire-making is among the North American Indians. The plate from which Fig. 26 is taken is marked by Schoolcraft as representing the apparatus used by the Sioux, or Dacotahs. They, as well as the Naskapee Indians of Canada, whom Dr. D. Wilson notices as making fire with a bow-drill, may possibly have caught the idea from the European boring instrument.

Lastly, there is a curious little contrivance, known to English toolmakers as the "pump-drill," from its being worked up and down like a pump. That kept in the London tool-shops is all of metal, expanding into a bulb instead of the disk shown in Fig. 27, which represents the kind used in Switzerland, consisting of a wooden spindle, armed with a steel point, and weighted with a wooden disk. A string is made fast to the ends of the cross-piece, and in the middle to the top of the spindle. As the