270 FIRE, COOKING^ AND VESSELS. 



The compai'ison of two accounts of vessels found, one among 

 tlie Esquimaux, the other among their neighbours the Una- 

 lashkans (whose langu^age contains proofs of intimate contact 

 with them^j, may serve to give an idea of the way in which 

 clay may come to supersede less convenient materials, and a 

 gradual approach be made towards the potter's art. When 

 James Hall was in Greenland, in 1605, he found the natives 

 boiling food over their lamps, in vessels with stone bottoms, 

 and sides of whale's fins.~ In Unalashka, Captain Cook found 

 that some of the natives had got brass kettles from the Rus- 

 sians, but those who had not, made their own " of a flat stone, 

 with sides of clay, not unlike a standing pye."* He thoug'ht it 

 likely that they had learnt to boil from the Russians, but the 

 Russians could hardly have taught them to make such vessels 

 as these, and the appearance of a kettle with a stone bottom 

 (no doubt potstone), and sides of another material, at the two 

 opposite sides of America, gives ground for supposing it to 

 have been in common use in high latitudes. 



From the examination of an earthen vessel from the Fiji 

 Islands, Dr. D. S, Price considers that it was very likely made 

 by moulding clay on the outside of the shell or rind of some 

 fruit. The vessel in question is made watertight after the South 

 American manner by a varnish of resin. The evident and fre- 

 quent adoption of gourd-shapes in the earthenware of distant 

 parts of the world does not prove much, but as far as it goes 

 it tells in favour of the opinion that such gourd-like vessels 

 may be the successors of real gourds, made into pottery by 

 a plastering of clay. Some details given in 1841 by Squier 

 and Davis, in their account of the monuments in the Mississippi 

 Valley, are much more to the purpose. " In some of the Sou- 

 thern States, it is said, the kilns, in which the ancient pottery 

 was baked, are now occasionally to be met with. Some are 

 represented still to contain the ware, partially burned, and re- 

 taining the rinds of the gourds, etc., over which they were 

 modelled, and which had not been entirely removed by the 



' Buschmann, Azt. Spr., p. 702. = Purchas, vol. iii. p. 817. 



3 Cook, Third Voy., toI. ii. p. 510. 



