268 FIKE, COOKING^ AND VESSELS. 



the same thing has been noticed among the Reindeer Koriaks.^ 

 Thus the story told by Herodotus of the Scythians, who, when 

 they had not a suitable cauldron, used to boil the flesh of the 

 sacrificed beast in its own paunch,^ seems to give a glimpse of 

 a state of things in the centre of Asia, resembling that which 

 has continued into modern times in the remote Noi'th-East. It 

 is thus not unlikely that the use of stone-boiling, to meet the 

 want of suitable vessels for direct boiling over the fire, may 

 once have had a range in Asia far beyond the Kamchatkan 

 promontory.^ 



It may be that the more convenient boiling, in vessels set 

 over the fire, was generally preceded in the world by the 

 clumsier stone-boiling, of which the history, so far as I have 

 been able to make it out from evidence within my reach, has 

 thus been sketched. Of vessels used for the higher kind 

 of boiling, as commonly known to us, something may now be 

 said. 



It is not absolutely necessary that vessels of earthenware, 

 metal, etc., should be used for this purpose. Potstone, lapis 

 ollaris, has been used by the Esquimaux, and by various Old 

 World peoples, to make vessels which will stand the fire.* 

 The Asiatic paunch-kettles have just been mentioned, and 

 kettles of skins have been described among the Esquimaux,* 

 and even among the inhabitants of the Hebrides, of whose way 

 of life George Buchanan gives the following curious account : 

 ■ — " In food, clothing, and all domestic matters, they use the 

 ancient parsimony. Their meat is supplied by hunting and 

 fishing. The flesh they boil with water in the paunch or hide 

 of the slaughtered beast ; out hunting they sometimes eat it 

 raw, when the blood has been pressed out. For drink they 

 have the broth of the meat. Whey that has been kept for 

 years, they also drink greedily at their feasts. This kind of 



* Kracheninnikow, p. 142. 



2 Herod., iv. 61. 



^ The frequent use of wicter baskets for holding liquids, in Africa, may have a 

 bearing on the liistory of stone-boiling. See mention of hot stones for melting or 

 boiling fat, in Bleek, ' Reynard in Africa,' pp. 8-10. 



■* Ci-anz, p. 73 ; Linnaeus, vol. i. p. 356 ; Klomm, C. G., vol. ii. p. 266, etc. etc. 



5 Martin Frobisher, in ' Hakluyt,' vol. iii. pp. 66, 95. 



