MAKING FIRE 201 



people is the apparatus for making fire, which consists 

 of three different parts, the spUt stick, the rattan, and 

 the tinder. The spht stick is a short stick of wood an 

 inch or so in diameter, which is spht at one end and is 

 held open by a small pebble placed between the split 

 halves. The rattan is a long piece of split rattan wound 

 upon itself into a neatly coiled ring (see illustration p. 202), 

 and the tinder is usually a lump of the fibrous sheath 

 of a palm shoot and sometimes a piece of dried moss. 



The method of making fire is as follows : In the split 

 of the stick, between the stone which holds the split ends 

 apart and the solid stick, is placed a small fragment of 

 tinder. The operator — if one may use so modern a word 

 in describing so ancient a practice — places the stick upon 

 the ground and secures the solid, i.e. the unsplit end with 

 his foot. Then, having unwound about a yard of the 

 rattan, he holds the coil in one hand and the free end in 

 the other and looping the middle of it underneath the 

 stick at the point where the tinder is placed he proceeds 

 to saw it backwards and forwards with extreme rapidity. 

 In a short space of time, varying from ten to thirty 

 seconds, the rattan snaps and he picks up the stick with 

 the tinder, which has probably by this time begun to 

 smoulder, and blows it into flame. At the point where 

 the rattan rubs on the stick a deep cut is made on the 

 stick, and at each successive use the stick is split a little 

 further down and the rattan is rubbed a little further 

 back, so that a well-used fire-stick is marked with a 

 number of dark burnt rings. It was only with the 

 greatest difficulty and after many attempts that we 

 succeeded in producing fire in this manner, but the 



