'260 FIRE, COOKING, AND VESSELS. 



keep fire continually smouldering in hollow trees, so that they 

 have only to clear away the ashes at any time to cook their 

 little pig's and fish.^ In Africa, the natives take possession of 

 a great ant-hill, destroy the ants, and clear out the inside, leav- 

 ing only the clay walls standing, which they make red hot with 

 a fire, so as to and bake joints of rhinoceros within." But these 

 are unusual expedients, and a much commoner form of savage 

 oven is a mere pit in the ground. In the most elaborate kind 

 of this cooking in underground ovens, hot stones are put in 

 with the food, as in the familiar South- Sea Island practice, 

 which is too well known to need description. The Malagasy 

 plan seems to be the same;^ but the Polynesians and their 

 connexions have by no means a monopoly of the art, which is 

 practised with little or no difference in other parts of the world. 

 The Gruanches of the Canary Islands buried meat in a hole in 

 the ground, and lighted a fire over it ;* and a similar practice 

 is still sometimes found in the island of Sardinia,^ while among 

 the Beduins, and in places in North and South America, the pro- 

 cess comes even closer to that used in the South Seas.* It is 

 this wide diffusion of the art which makes it somewhat doubt- 

 ful whether Klemm is right in considering its occurrence in 

 Australia as one of the results of intercourse with more ci- 

 vilized islands. The natives cook in underground ovens on 

 very distant parts of the coast ; sometimes hot stones are used, 

 and sometimes not.' 



When meat or vegetables are kept for many hours on a 

 gTating above a slow fire, the combination of roasting and 

 smoking brings the food into a state in which it will keep for a 

 long while, even in the tropics. Jean de Lery, in the account 

 of his adventures among the Indians of Brazil, about 1557, de- 



' Mouat, p. 308. 



- Klemm, C. Gr., vol. iii. p. 222. Moffat, Missionary Labours, etc., in S. Africa ; 



London, 18i2, p. 521. 



^ Ellis, Madagascar, vol. i. p. 72. 



■* Barker-Webb and Berthelot, vol. i. part i. p. 134. 



■' Maury, ' La Terra & THomme;' Paris, 1857, p. 572. 



6 Klemm, C. G., vol. ii. p. 26 ; vol. iv. p. 120. FitzRoy, in Tr. Eth. Soc, 

 1861, p. 4. 



" Cook, 1st Voy. H., vol. iii. p. 233. Lang, p. 347. Grey, Journals, vol. i. 



p. 176 ; vol. ii. p. 274. Klemm, C. G., vol. i. p. 307. Eyre, vol. ii. p. 289. 



