1770 METHOD OF OBTAINING FIRE 317 
coming to us one day with a beard rather longer than his 
fellows: the next day he came again, and his beard was 
then almost cropped close to his chin, and upon examination 
we found the ends of the hairs all burned, so that he had 
certainly singed it off. Their manner of hunting and taking 
wild animals we had no opportunity of seeing; we only guessed 
that the notches which they had everywhere cut in the bark 
of the large trees, which certainly seems to make climbing 
more easy to them, might be intended to allow them to 
ascend these trees in order either to watch for any animal 
unwarily passing under them which they might pierce with 
their darts, or to take birds which might roost in them at 
night. We guessed also that the fires which we saw so 
frequently as we passed along shore, extending over a large 
tract of country, and by which we could constantly trace 
the passage of Indians who went from us in Endeavour’s 
river up into the country, were intended in some way or 
other for taking the animal called by them kangooroo, 
which we found to be so much afraid of fire that we could 
hardly force it with our dogs to go over places newly 
burnt. 
They get fire very expeditiously with two pieces of stick : 
the one must be round and eight or nine inches long, and 
both it and the other should be dry and soft: the round 
they sharpen a little at one end, and pressing it upon the 
other turn it round with the palms of their hand, just as 
Europeans do a chocolate-mill, often shifting their hands up 
and running them down quickly to make the pressure as 
hard as possible: in this manner they will get fire in less 
than two minutes, and when once possessed of the smallest 
spark increase it in a manner truly wonderful. We often 
admired a man running along shore and apparently carrying 
nothing in his hand, yet as he ran along just stooping down 
every 50 or 100 yards; smoke and fire were seen among 
the drift-wood and dirt at that place almost the instant he 
had left it. This we afterwards found was done by the 
infinite readiness every kind of rubbish, sticks, withered 
leaves, or dry grass, already almost like tinder by the heat 
