Page:Researches into the Early History of Mankind and the Development of Civilization.djvu/270

260 these fires to burn them up. Here is the manner of kindling this Givoy agon, or living fire. Some men take hold of the ends of a maple staff, very dry, and about a fathom long. This staff they hold fast over a piece of birch-wood, which must also be very dry, and whilst they vigorously rub the staff upon the last wood, which is much softer than the first, it inflames in a short time, and serves to kindle the pair of fires, of which I have just made mention."

To sum up now, in a few words, the history of the art of making fire, it appears that the common notion that the friction of two pieces of wood was the original method used, has strong and wide-lying evidence in its favour, and very little that can be alleged against it. It has been seen that in many districts where higher methods have long prevailed, its former existence as a household art is proved by traces that have come down to us in several different ways. Where the use of pyrites for striking fire is found existing in company with it in North America, it is at least likely that the fire-stick is the older instrument. Perhaps the most notable fact bearing on this question is the use of pyrites by the miserable inhabitants of Tierra del Fuego. I do not know that the fire-sticks have ever been seen among them, but it seems more reasonable to suppose that they were used till they were supplanted by the discovery of the fire-making property of pyrites, than to make so insignificant a people an exception to a world-wide rule. This art of striking fire instead of laboriously producing it with the drill is not, indeed, the only thing in which the culture of this race stands above that of their northern neighbours, for, as has been mentioned, these last were found using no navigable craft but rafts, while the Fuegians had bark canoes, and those by no means of the lowest quality. It is worthy of note that the Peruvians, though they had pyrites, and broke the nodules to polish the faces into mirrors, do not seem to have used it to strike fire with. If they did not, their civilization stood in this matter below that of the much-despised Fuegians. The ancient Mexicans also made mirrors of polished pyrites, and perhaps they may have used it to strike fire; but the wooden friction-apparatus was certainly common among