246 



riEE,, COOKING, AND VESSELS. 



for centuries used a higlaer metliod, striking sparks with a flint 

 from a piece of iron pyrites upon their tinder. This process is 

 described as still in use/ and is evidently what Captain Wallis 

 meant by saying (in 1 767), that " To kindle a fire they strike a 

 pebble against a piece of mundic."^ A much earlier account of 

 the same thing appears in the voyage of Sarmiento de Gamboa, 

 in 1579-80.^ Iron pyrites answers extremely well instead of the 

 steel, and was found in regular use in high northern latitudes 

 in America, among the Slave and Dog Rib Indians.* It is 

 probably the " iron-stone " which the Esquimaux call ujarak- 

 saviminilik, and from which they strike fire with a fragment of 

 flint,^ and is perhaps referred to in Father Le Jeune's statement 

 that the Algonquin Indians strike fire with two minerals iinerres 

 de wine) .^ The use of iron pyrites for striking fire was known 

 to the Greeks and Romans, and it shared with flint the name 

 of_^rc-stone, TrLiptV?;?, iryrites, which it and some other metallic 

 sulphurets have since taken entire possession of. 



Two accounts of a process of fire-making in and about North- 

 West America are unfortunately indefinite. Captain Cook re- 

 marked that in Unalashka the natives produced fire by striking 

 two stones, one with a good deal of brimstone rubbed on it.''' 

 Their neighbours, the Aleutian Islanders, Kotzebue says, make 

 fire by striking together two stones with sulphur rubbed in, 

 over dry moss also strewed with sulphur.^ It does not seem 

 an easy thing to light tinder in this way with two flints, though 

 particles of the sulphur easily ignite, and I have been told by 

 a gun-flint maker that gunpowder may be lighted by throwing 

 a quantity of flint chips violently down upon it on a flagstone. 



' W. P. Snow, ' Tierra del Fuego,' etc. ; London, 1857, vol. ii. p. 360. 



^ Wallis, in Hawkeswortli, vol. i. p. 171. 



^ Sarmiento de Gamboa, ' Yiage al Estreclio de Magallanes ;' Madrid, 1768, 

 p. 229. " T unos pedazos de pedernal, pasados, y pintados de margaxita de ore y 

 plata : J preguntandoles que para que era aquello ? dixeron per seuas, que para 

 sacar fuego ; j luego uno de eUos tomd unas plumas de las que trahia, y sirvien- 

 dole de yesca, saed fuego con el pedernal. Pareceme que es (casca?) de metal de 

 plata li ore de reta, porque es al natural como el curiquixo de porco en el Pirii." 



^ Mackenzie, ' Voyages ; ' London, 1801, p. 38. Elemm, C. G-., vol. ii. p. 26. 



' Hayes, ' Arctic Boat Journey ;' London, 1860, p. 217. 



^ Le Jeune, ' Relation,' etc. (1634) ; Paris, 1635, p. 91. Lafitau, toI. ii. p. 242. 



^ Cook, Third Voy., vol. ii. p. 513. ^ Kotzebue, vol. iii. p. 155. 



