234 piEE, COOKING, AND VESSELS. 



the only instance of the wonderful permanence of old stories in 

 this part of the worlds quite irrespectively of their being true. 

 Within no great distance, an old negro gave Mr. Petherick an 

 account of the monstrous men he had met with in his travels, 

 the men with four eyes, the men with eyes under their arm- 

 pits, the men with long tails, and the men whose ears were so 

 big that they covered their bodies ;^ so nearly has the modern 

 African kept to the wonder-tales that were current in the time 

 of Pliny .2 



An unquestionable account of a fireless tribe would be of the 

 highest interest to the ethnographer, proving, as it would do, 

 a great step forward made by the races who can produce fire, 

 for this is an art which, once learnt, could hardly be lost. But 

 when we see that stories of such tribes have been set up again 

 and again without any sound basis, while further information, 

 when brought to bear on a series of such stories, tells against 

 them so far as it goes, we are hardly warranted in trusting 

 others of the same kind just because we have no means of test- 

 ing them. A cause is required for the appearance of such 

 stories in the world, but it does not follow that this cause must 

 be the real existence of fireless tribes ; a mere belief in their 

 existence will answer the purpose, and this belief is known to 

 have been current for ages, especially coming out in the Pro- 

 metheus-legends of various regions of the world. Experience 

 shows how such an idea, when once fairly afloat, will assert it- 

 self from time to time in stories furnished with place, date, and 

 circumstance. It must be remembered, too, that the fireless 

 men form only one of a number of races mentioned by writers, 

 old and new, as being distinguished by the want of something 

 which man usually possesses, who have no language, no names, 

 no idea of spiritual beings, no dreams, no mouths, no heads, 

 or no noses, but whose real existence more accurate knowledge 

 has by no means tended to confirm. 



In connexion vnth the stories of fireless tribes, some accounts 



of a kind of transitional state may be mentioned here. Mr. 



Backhouse was told by a native of Van Diemen^s Land, that 



his ancestors had no means of making fire before their ac- 



1 Petherick, p. 367. = Plin., ri. 35, vii. 2. 



