10 BULLETIN 139, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



hood and having a chimney made up of pottery vessels with the bot- 

 toms knocked out. The ancient subterranean or pit houses un- 

 covered at Luna, New Mexico, had the fireplace near the center 

 of the circular pit, off center, it is thought, on account of the ladder 

 by which exit and entrance was effected through a combination door 

 and smoke hole. Farther south the Pima fireplace was placed under 

 the ramada or branch bower in front of the hut. It was sometimes 

 protected from the .wind by a wing wall of mud extending about 

 two-thirds of the way around the fire, and a wooden rack is placed 

 over the fire to set cooking vessels on. In the fires in the windbreak 

 houses of the Pima tliree stones are placed in the fire for a similar 

 purpose. Attention will be caUed to these features in the discussion 

 of the stove. 



In Mexico, generally, the fire was placed outside the door of the 

 house. In Colombia, at Panquita, in the mud huts the fire was 

 placed in the middle of the room between three stones. 



The Caribs of British Guiana had a fire outside the house. The 

 Caribs of Dominica built their fire under the shedlike structure of 

 their houses. The larger communal structures of northern South 

 America southward, which consist generally of a roof on posts, had 

 a house fire in the center or near the hammocks of their occupants. 

 In the communal house at the junction of the Uapes and Rio Negro, 

 Brazil, there was a fireplace to each family.^' To the south in this 

 vast continent (Chaco, Patagonia) the outside fire was common. 

 The Fuegians in their most inhospitable region made little use of 

 house fires, but the Yakgan Tribe built conical wigwams with the 

 hearth in the center.^- This sketch merely shows some of the envi- 

 ronmental influences which governed the placing of the house fire. 

 In the east and west extending Old World the picture becomes more 

 complicated. In Europe the subject will have to be discussed under 

 the stove warming and cooking devices as improvements on the home 

 fire. Vestiges of earlier methods, however, have survived in less- 

 advanced groups of peoples. In general, north Europe reflects in all 

 its arts the lower winter temperature, and southern Europe the con- 

 ditions which obtain in warmer climates and are similar to those of 

 the Near East. 



In Persia the fireplace is put in the middle of the room and con- 

 sists of a deep, round hole in the floor, in which charcoal and cow 

 dung are burned. ^^ This form is used by the lower classes. 



William de Rubruquis, on his visit to the Grand Kh&n at Mangou, 

 Northern Tartary, in 1254, writes that in the center of the apartment 



"Alfred Russell Wallace. Narrative of Travels on the Amazon and Rio Negro, London, 1853, pp. 

 ^5-277. 



"Joum. Anthrop. Inst., London, 1886, vol. 15, p. 144. 



"Woman's Work for Women, January, 1888, p. 11, and October, 1888, p. 259. 



