1884. } Men Ignorant of Fire. 231 
The natives of Fanua Loa, when discovered, were quite ingeni- 
ous in the construction of houses, canoes, and various fishing im- 
plements, mats, &c., considering the total absence of all metals, 
their island being of coral formation, and their having no com- 
munication with any other. 
The various boxes, bowls, stools, &c., carved from the solid 
wood with sharks’ teeth, and smoothed with coral and shark-skin 
files, were obtained and brought home, and formed a part of the 
nucleus of the National Museum in the Smithsonian Institution 
at Washington, where they now hold a place in the Ethnological 
Department ; but, strange as it may appear, some wag, more 
learned than wise, wrote on a box containing fishing implements 
the words, “ Tinder box,” to contradict the statement by Captain 
Hudson, in Wilkes’ published journal—a practical joke, no doubt, 
but one that should never have been tolerated by those in charge 
of the public specimens in a national museum. 
That cold meals agreed with the Fanua Loans was evidenced 
by their appearance—they were a handsome people. When we 
visited them in January, 1841, they were living anterior to their 
“stone age ;” no one of them, it is probable, had ever seen a 
Stone, or a stone implement of any kind; the smallest stone to 
them would have been as great a curiosity as a coral tree would 
be to a Dakota Indian on our prairies! Their hardest edge tools 
were made of sharks’ teeth or chama shells, yet their carving was 
not bad ; their canoes, stools and boxes, &c., were neatly smoothed 
with sharks’ skins on wooden handles, forming rasps of various 
shapes to suit the work to be done. They had a well, and a sea 
wall built of coral rock. 
We obtained from them very neatly plaited rush mats used for 
clothing, &c., but saw no tapa or bark cloth, so common on the 
volcanic islands of the Pacific ocean. 
The thunder of our cannon, when measuring the island by 
Sound, when explained to them, did not create half the alarm 
created by a lighted cigar, which in their understanding could 
TA bear any explanation, and no persuasion on either of our. 
visits could induce them to approach it. 
Py after -two years, and when foreign missionaries have 
there, this plain statement of a little fact about fire, will 
perhaps be as new at Fanua Loa as similar facts will be about 
“anibalism on other islands where they have been taught to con- 
