MODES OF OBTAINING FIRE. 557 



Again, in obtaining fire, two principal methods are followed; 

 some savages, as for instance the Aleutians and Fuegians, 

 using percussion, while others, as the South Sea Islanders, rub 

 one piece of wood against another. The Aleutians rub two 

 pieces of quartz with sulphur, and then strike them together, 

 catching the sparks on dry grass.* Opinions are divided 

 whether we have any trustworthy record of a people without 

 the means of obtaining fire. It has been already mentioned 

 (pp. 447, 453) that some of the Australians and Tasmanians, 

 though acquainted with fire, did not know how to obtain it. 

 In his history of the Ladrone Islands, Father Gobien asserts 

 that fire, " an element of such universal use, was utterly un- 

 known to them, till Magellan, provoked by their repeated 

 thefts, burned one of their villages. When they saw their 

 wooden houses blazing, they first thought the fire a beast 

 which fed upon wood, and some of them who came too near, 

 being burnt, the rest stood afar off, lest they should be de- 

 voured, or poisoned, by the violent breathings of this terrible 

 animal/' This fact is not mentioned in the original account 

 of Magellan's Voyage. Freycinet believes that the assertion 

 of Father Gobien is entirely without foundation. The lan- 

 guage, he says, of the inhabitants contains words for fire, 

 burning charcoal, oven, grilling, boiling, etc. ; and even before 

 the advent of the Europeans, pottery)- was well known. It 

 is difficult, however, to get over the distinct assertion made 

 by Gobien, which moreover derives some support from similar 

 statements made by other travellers. Thus Alvaro de Saavedra 

 states that the inhabitants of certain small islands in the 

 Pacific, which he called " Los Jardines," but which cannot 

 now be satisfactorily determined, stood in terror of fire be- 

 cause they had never seen it.J Again, Wilkes tells us that 



* Bancroft, Nat. Races of the J Hakluyt Soc. 1862, p. 178. 

 Pacific States, vol. i. p. 91. United States' Expl. Exped. 



t 1. c. vol. ii. p. 166. vol. v. p. 18. 



