FIRE^ COOKING, AND VESSELS. 229 



tury, declares that " in times past they ate raw meat, for want 

 of fire." Farther on in the same book he has another story of 

 a fireless people. In 1529, Alvaro de Saavedra, returning from 

 the Moluccas toward the Pacific coast of Mexico, sailed east- 

 ward along the north coast of New Guinea, and having gone 

 four or five degrees south of the Line, crossed again to the 

 north, and discovered an island of tattooed people, which he 

 called Isla de los Pintados, or the isle of painted men. Beyond 

 this island, in 10° or 12° IST., they found many small smooth 

 ones together, full of palms and grass, and these they called 

 Los Jardines, " The Gardens." The natives had no domestic 

 animals, they were dressed in a white cloth of grass, ate cocoa- 

 nuts for bread, and raw fish, which they took in the praus which 

 they made out of drift pine-wood with their tools of shell. 

 They stood in terror of fire, for they had never seen it (espan- 

 taram se do fogo, porque nunca o viram).^ I am not aware 

 that these islands have been identified, but they would seem to 

 be somewhere about the Radak or Chatham group. The ac- 

 count of the natives, to judge by its general consistency with 

 what is known of the common eating of raw vegetables and 

 fish in other coral islands in the Pacific, seems to have come 

 mostly or altogether from an eye-witness, and the statement 

 that they had no fire is not to be summarily set down as a mere 

 fiction, like that about the Canary Islands. It has fortunately 

 happened, however, that a very similar story has come up 

 in our own time about another coral island, under circum- 

 stances which allow of its accuracy being tested. When the 

 United States' Exploring Expedition, under Commodore Wilkes, 

 visited Fakaafo or Bowditch Island in 1841, they made the 

 following remarks : — " There was no sign of places for cook- 

 ing, nor any appearance of fire, and it is believed that all their 

 provisions are eaten raw. What strengthened this opinion, 

 was the alarm the natives felt when they saw the sparks ema- 

 nating from the flint and steel, and the emission of smoke from 

 the mouths of those who were smoking cigars."" 



' Galvano, 'Discoveries of the World;' Hakluyt Soc, London, 1862, pp. 66, 

 174-9, 238. 



= Wilkes, Narr. of U. S. Exploring Exp., 1838-42; London, 1845, toI.t. p. 18. 



