Page:Researches into the Early History of Mankind and the Development of Civilization.djvu/271

Rh them. Even the fire-drills of Peru and Mexico were of the simplest kind, twirled between the hands without any contrivance to lessen the labour, so that even the rude Esquimaux and Indian tribes have reached, in this respect, a higher stage of art than these comparatively civilized peoples.

To turn now from the art of making fire to one of its principal uses to mankind. The art of Cooking is as universal as Fire itself among the human race; but there are found, even among savages, several different processes that come under the general term, and a view of the distribution of these processes over the world may throw some light on the early development of Human Culture.

Roasting or broiling by direct exposure to the fire seems the one method universally known to mankind, but the use of some kind of oven is also very general. The Andaman Islanders keep fire continually smouldering in hollow trees, so that they have only to clear away the ashes at any time to cook their little pigs and fish. In Africa the natives take possession of a great ant- hill, destroy the ants, and clear out the inside, leaving only the clay walls standing, which they make red hot with a fire, so as to bake joints of rhinoceros within. But these are unusual expedients, and a much commoner form of savage oven is a mere pit in the ground. In the most elaborate kind of this cooking in underground ovens, hot stones are put in with the food, as in the familiar South-Sea Island practice, which is too well known to need description. The Malagasy plan seems to be the same; but the Polynesians and their connexions have by no means a monopoly of the art, which is practised with little or no difference in other parts of the world. In the Morea, the traveller's dinner is often prepared by making a fire in a hole in the ground, in which a kid or lamb is afterwards placed, and covered in by a stone made hot for the purpose. The Canary Islanders buried meat in a hole in the ground, and lighted a fire over it; and