238 FIEE, COOKINQj AND VESSELS. 



manner. To produce it they take two pieces of dry soft wood ; 

 one is a stick about eight or nine inches long, the other 

 piece is flat : the stick they shape into an obtuse point at 

 one end, and pressing it upon the other, turn it nimbly by 

 holding it between both their hands, as we do a chocolate mill, 

 often shifting their hands up, and then moving them down 

 upon it, to increase the pressure as much as possible. By this 

 method they get fire in less than two minutes, and from the 

 smallest spark they increase it with great speed and dex- 

 terity.^'^ It appears usual both in Australia and elsewhere to 

 lay the lower piece on the ground, holding it firm with feet or 

 knees. A good deal may depend on the kind of wood used, 

 and its dryness, etc., for in some countries it seems to take 

 much more time and labour, two men often working it, one 

 beginning at the top of the stick when his companion's hands 

 have come down nearly to the bottom, and so on till the fire 

 comes. 



Contrasting with the isolation of the stick-and-groove in a 

 single district, the geographical range of the simple fire-drill is 

 immense. Its use among the Australians forms one of the 

 characters which distinguish their culture from that of the Poly- 

 nesians ; while it appears again among the Malays in Sumatra^ 

 and the Carohnes.* It was found by. Cook in Unalashka,* and 

 by the Russians in Kamchatka ; where, for many years, flint 

 and steel could not drive it out of use among the natives, who 

 went on carrying every man his fire-sticks.^ There is reason 

 to suppose that it prevailed in India before the Aryans invaded 

 the country, bringing with them an improved apparatus, for at 

 this day it is used by the wild Veddahs of Ceylon, a race so 

 capable of resisting foreign innovation that they have not learnt 

 to smoke tobacco.^ It prevails, or has done so within modern 

 times, through great part of South Africa,''^ and it was in use 

 among the Guanches of the Canary Islands in the seventeenth 



^ Cook, First Voy. H., Tol. iii. p. 234. Angas, S. Australia, pi. 27. 

 2 Marsden, p. 60. ^ Kotzebue, toI. iii. p. 154. 



■* Cook, Third Voy., vol. ii. p. 513. ' Kracheninrdkow, p. 30. 



Tennent, ' Ceylon,' vol. ii. p. 451. Bailey in Tr. Eth. Soc, 1863, p. 291. 

 ' Casalis, p. 129. Klemm, C. W., part i. p. 67. 



