1770 METHOD OF OBTAINING FIRE 317 



coming to us one day with a beard rather longer than his 

 fellows : the next day he came again, and his beard was 

 then almost cropped close to his chin, and upon examination 

 we found the ends of the hairs all burned, so that he had 

 certainly singed it off. Their manner of hunting and taking 

 wild animals we had no opportunity of seeing; we only guessed 

 that the notches which they had everywhere cut in the bark 

 of the large trees, which certainly seems to make climbing 

 more easy to them, might be intended to allow them to 

 ascend these trees in order either to watch for any animal 

 unwarily passing under them which they might pierce with 

 their darts, or to take birds which might roost in them at 

 night. We guessed also that the fires which we saw so 

 frequently as we passed along shore, extending over a large 

 tract of country, and by which we could constantly trace 

 the passage of Indians who went from us in Endeavour's 

 river up into the country, were intended in some way or 

 other for taking the animal called by them kangooroo, 

 which we found to be so much afraid of fire that we could 

 hardly force it with our dogs to go over places newly 

 burnt. 



They get fire very expeditiously with two pieces of stick : 

 the one must be round and eight or nine inches long, and 

 both it and the other should be dry and soft : the round 

 they sharpen a little at one end, and pressing it upon the 

 other turn it round with the palms of their hand, just as 

 Europeans do a chocolate-mill, often shifting their hands up 

 and running them down quickly to make the pressure as 

 hard as possible : in this manner they will get fire in less 

 than two minutes, and when once possessed of the smallest 

 spark increase it in a manner truly wonderful. We often 

 admired a man running along shore and apparently carrying 

 nothing in his hand, yet as he ran along just stooping down 

 every 50 or 100 yards ; smoke and fire were seen among 

 the drift-wood and dirt at that place almost the instant he 

 had left it. This we afterwards found was done by the 

 infinite readiness every kind of rubbish, sticks, withered 

 leaves, or dry grass, already almost like tinder by the heat 



