Page:Researches into the Early History of Mankind and the Development of Civilization.djvu/264

254 portance in everyday life, though lingering on, as it still does in our own day, in rites for which it was necessary to use pure wild fire, not the tame fire that lay like a domestic animal upon the hearth.

The traditions of inventors of the art of fire-making by the friction of wood have in so far an historical value, that they bring clearly into view a period when this was the usual practice. There is a Chinese myth that points to such a state of things, and which moreover presents, in the story of the "fire-bird," an analogy with a set of myths belonging to our own race, which may well be due to a deep-lying ethnological connexion. "A great sage went to walk beyond the bounds of the moon and the sun; he saw a tree, and on this tree a bird, which pecked at it and made fire come forth. The sage was struck with this, took a branch of the tree and produced fire from it, and thence this great personage was called Suy-jin." The friction-apparatus itself, apparently of the kind spoken of here as the fire-drill, is mentioned in Morrison's Chinese Dictionary. "Suy, an instrument to obtain fire. A speculum for obtaining fire from the sun is called suy or kin-suy. Muh-suy, an utensil to procure fire from wood by rotatory friction. Suy-jin-she, the first person who procured fire for the use of man." The very existence of a Chinese name for the fire-drill shows that it is, or has been, in use in the country.

The absence of evidence relating to fire-making in the Bible is remarkable. If, indeed, the following passage from the cosmogony of Sanchoniathon be founded on a Phœnician legend, it preserves an old Semitic record of the use of the fire-stick. "They say that from the wind Kolpia, and his wife Baan, which is interpreted Night, there were born mortal men, called Æon and Protogonos; and Æon found how to get food from trees. And those born from them were called Genos and Genea, and they inhabited Phœnicia. . . . Moreover, they say that, again, from Genos, son of Æon and Protogonos, they were born mortal children, whose names were Phos, Pur, and Phlox (Light, Fire, and Flame). These, they say, found out how to make fire from the friction of pieces of wood, and taught its use."