FIRE-MAKING APPARATUS. 545 



scriptious given it seems to liave been practiced by the Caranchua 

 Indians, a recently extinct tribe in Texas and Mexico. (See below.) 



These specimens from Costa Rica are the crudest fire tools, not to be 

 mere make shifts, that have come to my notice or have been described 

 in the literature examined. The Costa Rican Indians are very inter- 

 esting in their preservation of several other arts that may justly be 

 classed among- the most ancient. One may be mentioned, that of bark 

 cloth making. Professor Gabb made quite a collection from Talamanca, 

 but has not left any notes on these remarkable people, who are w^ell 

 worthy of the careful study of ethnologists. 



A curious modification of this central hole plan is figured and de- 

 scribed in Oviedo, folio 90, as occurring in Hispaniola ; that is, the West 

 Indies, Hayti, San Domingo, etc. He says that "two dry light sticks 

 of brown wood were tied firmly together, and the point of the drill of 

 a particular hard wood was inserted between the two and then worked." 

 Mr. H. Ling Eoth* thinks that if one can judge from the illustration 

 (which is a miserable one) in Benzoni's work, the natives of Nicaragua 

 also used three sticks in making fire. Benzoni, however, says : t 



All over ludia they light fire with two pieces of wood ; although they had a great 

 deal of was, they knew no use for it, and produced light from pieces of wild pine 

 wood. 



From Oviedo's description I am inclined to believe that the dust in 

 which the fire starts was allowed to fall below on tinder placed beneath 

 tlie hearth. 



Through the kindness of Prof. F. W. Putnam, curator of the Peabody 

 Museum, at Cambridge, Mass., I have received an extract from a manu- 

 script written by Mrs. Alice W. Oliver, of Lynn, who, as a girl, in 1838 

 resided on Matagorda Bay, and learned the language and customs of 

 the Caranchua Indians, a separate stock, now thought to be extinct. 



Mrs. Oliver says : 



After the hut is built a fire is made, the sqn.iws usually beggiug fire or matches from 

 the settlers, but, in case their fire is out aud they hive no other means of kindling it, 

 they resort to the primitive method of producing it by friction of wood. They 

 always carry their fire-sticks with them, keeping them carefully wrapped in several 

 layers of skins tied up with thongs and made into aneat package; they are thus kept 

 very dry, and as soon as the occasion for their use is over, they are immediately 

 "wrapped up again aud laid away. 



These sticks are two iu number. One of them is held across the knees as they squat on 

 the ground, aud is about two feet long, made of a close-grained, brownish-yellow wood 

 (perhaps pecan), half round in section ; the flat face, which is held upward, is about q,u 

 inch across. Three cylindrical holes about half an inch iu diameter and of equal 

 depth, the bottoms slightly concave, are made in it. The three holes are equally 

 distant apart, about 2 inches, and the first one is the same distance from the end 

 of the stick, which rests upon the right knee. In one of the holes is inserted the 

 slightly-rounded end of a twirliug stick made of a white, softer kind of wood, some- 

 what less than the diameter of the hole, so as to turn easily, and about 18 inches long. 



*The Aborigines of Hispaniola. J, Anthrop., Inst, Gt. Britain and Ireland, xvi, 

 p. 282. 

 tG. Beuzoui.— History of the New Wdrll, Ha-kUiyt ^ooiety, xxi, p. 151. 



IJ, Mis, X43, pt, 3-^^35 



