240 



riRE, COOKING, AND VESSELS. 



he works liis centre-bit, is applied to fire-inaking by a very- 

 simple device represented in Fig. 23, wliich is drawn according 



to Mr. Darwin's descrip- 

 tion of the plan used by 

 the Gauchos of the Pam- 

 pas ; " taking an elastic 

 stick about eighteen inch- 

 es long, he presses one 

 end on his breast, and the 

 other (which is pointed) 

 in a hole in a piece of 

 wood, and then rapidly 

 ■^'S- 23. turns the curved part, 



like a carpenter^s centre-bit."^ The Gauchos, it should be ob- 

 served, are not savages, but half- wild herdsmen of mixed Eu- 

 ropean, Indian, and African blood, who would probably only 

 use such a means of kindling fire when the flint and steel were 

 for the moment not at hand, and their fire-drill is not only like 

 the carpenter's brace, but most likely suggested by it. 



To wind a cord or thong round the drill, so as, by pulling 

 the two ends alternately, to make it revolve very rapidly, is 

 a great improvement on mere hand-twirling. As Kuhn has 

 pointed out, this contrivance was in use for boring in Europe 

 in remote times ; Odysseus describes it in telling how he and 

 his companions put out the eye of the Cyclops : — 



ol fj,6V fio)(K6v eXovres eKaivov, o^iiv eV aKpa, 

 6(^6aKjX(0 ivepeiaav e'yco 8' f(pv7rep6ev depdels, 

 blv€ov (OS ore tis rpvira dopv vrj'iov avTjp 

 rpvTTava, oi be r evep6ev VTro(T(rtiov(riv ipdvTi 

 a\jfdp€VOi eKarepde, to Se Tpe^ei epptves alei." 



" They then seizing the sharp-cut stake of the wood of the olive 

 Thrust it into his eye, the while I standing above them. 

 Bored it into the hole : — as a shipwright boreth a timber. 

 Guiding the drUl that his men below drive backward and forward. 

 Pulling the ends of the thong while the point runs round without 

 ceasing." 



In modem India, butter-churns are worked with a cord in 



' Darwin, in Narr., toI. iii. p. 488. 



' Kuhn, ' Herabkunft des Feuers,' p. 39. Horn. Od., is. 382. 



