Page:Researches into the Early History of Mankind and the Development of Civilization.djvu/275

Rh time of the Spanish discovery, and the art extended northward over an immense district, lying mostly between the Rocky Mountains and the Atlantic, and stretching up into Canada. In Eastern North America the first European discoverers found the art of earthenware-making in full operation, and forming a regular part of the women's work, and on this side of the continent, as high at least as New England, the site of an Indian village may be traced, like so many of the ancient settlements in the Old World, by innumerable fragments of pottery. But the Stone-Boilers extended far south on the Pacific side, and also occupied what may be roughly called the northern half of North America.

In that north-eastern corner of Asia which is of such extreme interest to the ethnographer, as preserving the lower human culture so near the high Asiatic civilization, and yet so little influenced by it, the art of Stone-boiling was found in full force. The Kamchadals, like some American tribes, used hollowed wooden troughs for the purpose, and long resisted the use of the iron cooking pots of the Russians, considering that the food only kept its flavour properly when dressed in the old-fashioned way.

Thus the existence of a great district of Stone-Boilers in Northern Asia and America is made out by direct evidence, but beside this we know of the practice in a southern district of the world.

In Australia, Mr. T. Baines mentions native cooking-places seen on the Victoria River in 1855-6, small holes in the ground, where fish, water-tortoise, and, in one instance, a small alligator, had been made to boil by the immersion of heated stones in the water. Thus the Australians, at least in modern times, must be counted as stone-boilers. Concerning the New Zealanders, Captain Cook made a remark that "having no vessel in which water can be boiled, their cooking consists wholly of baking and roasting. But the inference that people who have no vessel that will stand the fire must therefore be unable to boil food is