228 



CHAPTER IX. 



FIEE, COOKING, AND VESSELS. 



There are a number of stories, old and new, of tribes of man- 

 kind living in ignorance of tbe art of fire-making. Such a 

 state of things is indeed usually presupposed by the wide- 

 spread legends of first fire-makers or fire-bringers, and Plu- 

 tarch, in his essay on the question " Whether water or fire is 

 the more useful V, gives a typical view of the matter. Fire 

 was invented, as they say, by Prometheus, and our life shows 

 that this was not a poetic fiction. For there are some races of 

 men who live without fire, houseless, hearthless, and dwelhng 

 in the open air.^ The modern point of view is, however, very 

 different from Plutarch's, and when the mention of a fireless 

 race appears in company with a Prometheus, mythology, not 

 history, claims it. The mere assertion that in a certain place a 

 race is, or was, to be found living without fire is more difficult 

 to deal with. In examining a collection of such statements, it 

 is well to pay particular attention to the modern ones, on which 

 collateral evidence may be brought to bear. 



What is known of the native civilization of the Canary 

 Islands, the making of pottery, the cooking in underground 

 ovens, the use of the fire-drill, leaves no doubt that the Guanches 

 knew how to produce and use fire at the time of the European 

 expeditions in the 14th and 15th centuries. Yet Antonio Gal- 

 vano, writing his treatise about the middle of the sixteenth cen- 



' Plut.j ' Aqua an Ignis utilior ?' 



