AKT. 14 



FIEE-MAKING APPARATUS — HOUGH 



21 



of the world in religious rites. There 

 is abundant data in the pictorial writ- 

 ings of the ancient Mexicans as to 

 the form and use of the simple fire 

 drill, especially in the codex discov- 

 ered by Mrs. Zelia Nuttall. A model 

 of a drill after this codex is shown on 

 Plate 2, figure 2a. 



One of the rudest fire-making ap- 

 pliances in the Museum was collected 

 by Prof. W. M. Gabb, at Talamanca, 

 Costa Rica. The hearth is a rude 

 billet of charred, black wood, resem- 

 bling mahogany. It has central 

 holes, with no gutter usually, though 

 sometimes a shallow notch is cut on 

 both sides of the fire-hole. The drill 

 is a light branch, rather crooked, but 

 dressed down roughly with a knife. 

 Another hearth is of partly decayed, 

 worm-eaten wood; with this a hard- 

 wood drill can be used, the hearth 

 wasting away instead of the drill. 

 (Fig. 16.) The absence of any fire 

 slot — that is, the use of the central 

 fire hole — is worthy of notice in this 

 locality. I have only observed its 

 use in various parts of the Eskimo 

 area, from east Greenland to Kodiak; 

 outside of this range I have not 

 noticed it anywhere else among the 

 present tribes of the world. From 

 descriptions given it seems to have 

 been practiced by the Caranchua 

 Indians, a recently extinct tribe in 

 Texas and Mexico. 



These specimens from Costa Rica 

 are the crudest fire tools, not to be 

 mere makeshifts, that have come to 

 my notice or have been described in 

 the literature examined. The Costa 

 Rican Indians are very interesting in 

 their preservation of several other 

 arts that may justly be classed among 

 the most ancient. One may be men- 

 tioned, that of bark cloth making. 



Fig. 16.— Fire-making set. Cat. No. 

 15396, U.S.N. M. Natives of Tala- 

 MANCA, Costa Rica. Collected by 

 W. M. Oabb 



