riRE, COOKING, AND VESSELS, 259 



strument. Perhaps the most notable fact bearing on this ques- 

 tion is the use of pyrites by the miserable inhabitants of Tierra 

 del Fuego. I do not know that the fire-sticks have ever been 

 seen among them, but it seems more reasonable to suppose that 

 they were used till they were supplanted by the discovery of the 

 fire-making property of pyrites, than to make so insignificant a 

 people an exception to a world-wide rule. This art of striking 

 fire, instead of laboriously producing it with the drill, is not, 

 indeed, the only fliing in which the culture of this race stands 

 above that of their northern neighbours, for, as has been men- 

 tioned, these last were found using no navigable craft but rafts, 

 while the Fuegians had bark canoes, and those by no means of 

 the lowest quality. It is worthy of note that the Peruvians, 

 though they had pyrites, and broke the nodules to polish the 

 faces into mirrors, do not seem to have used it to strike fire 

 with. If they did not, their civilization stood in this matter 

 below that of the much-despised Fuegians. The ancient Mexi- 

 cans also made mirrors of polished pyrites, and perhaps they 

 may have used it to strike fire ;^ but the wooden friction-appa- 

 ratus was certainly common among them. Even the fire-drills 

 of Peru and Mexico were of the simplest kind, twii'led between 

 the hands without any contrivance to lessen the labour, so that 

 even the rude Esquimaux and Indian tribes have reached, in 

 this respect, a higher stage of art than these comparatively 

 civilized peoples. 



To turn now from the art of making fire to one of its prin- 

 cipal uses to mankind. The art of Cooking is as universal as 

 Fire itself among the human rac6; but there are found, even 

 among savages, several different processes that come under the 

 general term, and a view of the distribution of these processes 

 over the world may throw some light on the eai^ly development 

 of Human Culture. 



Roasting or broiling by direct exposure to the fire seems the 

 one method universally known to mankind, but the use of some 

 kind of oven is also very general. The Andaman Islanders 



* It seems by a passage in Botnrini (p. 18), that he had some reason to think 

 they used flint to strike fire with, and if so, as they had no iron, tliey probably 

 used pyrites. 



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