218 cook's first voyage august, 



the manner of producing it, whether by collision or 

 attrition, was discovered by chance : but its first 

 effects would naturally strike those to whom it was 

 a new object, w r ith consternation and terror: it would 

 appear to be an enemy to life and nature, and to 

 torment and destroy whatever was capable of being 

 destroyed or tormented ; and therefore it seems not 

 easy to conceive what should incline those who first 

 saw it receive a transient existence from chance, to 

 reproduce it by design. It is by no means probable 

 that those who first saw fire approached it with the 

 same caution as those who are familiar with its 

 effects, so as to be warmed only, and not burnt ; 

 and it is reasonable to think that the intolerable 

 pain which, at its first appearance, it must produce 

 upon ignorant curiosity, would sow perpetual enmity 

 between this element and mankind ; and that the 

 same principle which incites them to crush a ser- 

 pent would incite them to destroy fire, and avoid all 

 means by which it would be produced, as soon as 

 they were known. These circumstances considered, 

 how men became sufficiently familiar with it to 

 render it useful, seems to be a problem very difficult 

 to solve : nor is it easy to account for the first ap- 

 plication of it to culinary purposes, as the eating 

 both animal and vegetable food raw, must have be- 

 come a habit, before there was fire to dress it, and 

 those who have considered the force of habit will 

 readily believe, that to men who had always eaten 

 the flesh of animals raw, it would be as disagreeable 

 dressed, as to those who have always eaten it dressed, 

 it would be raw. It is remarkable that the inhabit- 

 ants of Terra del Fuego produce fire from a spark 

 by collision, and that the happier natives of this 

 country, New Zealand, and Otaheite, produce it by 

 the attrition of one combustible substance against 

 another: is there not, then, some reason to suppose that 

 these different operations correspond with the man- 

 ner in which chance produced fire in the neighbour- 



