380 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[MarcH 10, 1906. 


point where the two sticks came in contact be- 
gan to smoke like fury. Quickly putting some 
scrapings of wood near the notch upon the birch 
bark, where a sort of brown dust caused by the 
friction had gathered, he gently blew it with his 
breath, and soon had a fire blazing under the 
kettle. He then prepared the medicine, and I 
took it to the little boy’s mother; and here let 
me say that the old redskin’s “heap good 
medicine’ cured my little playmate in a very 
short time. 
That night when I arrived home I told an 
old Indian who made his home at our house— 
“Old Jim Injun,” as he was always called—how 
the other one had made a fire with sticks, and 
he said: ‘He know how. Me know how; but 
pale-face don’t.” Then I asked him if he would 
show me how to do it, and also tell me what 
kind of wood to use, and he said: “Me show 
you some time.” And he did on one Sunday 
during the latter part of the following June. 
I well remember that day on account of two 
events that took place. One was that Henry 
Ward Beecher, who with his family was spend- 
ing his vacation in the village near my home, 
occupied the pulpit in the church, and the other, 
that I got the worst lambasting I ever got in 
my life; but I learned to start a fire Indian 
fashion—for Old Jim taught me thoroughly— 
which I then thought more than compensated 
for the licking. 
Early that morning, which was a cloudy one, 
I found him digging bait out behind the barn 
and I said to him: Goin’ fishin’?” 
“Mm,” he grunted. 
“Where?” 
“Mascraf. Want go ’long?”’ 
Now Mascraft Brook was then, and is now, 
the best trout stream in that part of Connecticut, 
and nothing pleased me better than to go there 
fishing, and especially with Old Jim Injun. So 
off we both went, and he had good luck, having 
caught that morning as handsome a string of 
trout as one ever saw. Later om tne weather be- 
came clear and hot, so tne fish stopped: biting, 
and we both lay under a tree near the stream. 
About noon Jim said: . “’Bout dinner time. 
Me hungry. You be? We roast fish.” He 
then cleaned some of the trout, and by his 
orders, I gathered several small, thin, flat stones 
from the bed of the stream. After cleaning the 
fish, he said: “Mus’ make some fire. Now show 
you how with sticks.” Then going into the 
woods, and I following, he took his small belt 
ax—which he always carried when either fishing 
or hunting—and selecting a small dead standing 
bass-wood tree, he cut it down. Cutting off a 
suitable piece he fashioned two sticks of about 
the proportions of those the other Indian used. 
He also cut a crooked green stick for a bow, 
and having adjusted the three sticks and thong 
each as the other did, and with a knot in his 
left hand, he see-sawed away and soon started 
a fire which he at first fed with fine slivers of 
dry wood. He told me that his people some- 
times used swamp cedar, when it could be had, 
instead of bass-wood, and sometimes, though 
rarely, used savin or upland or red‘cedar in 
place of the others. 
After the fire had burned awhile, thus making 
a good thick bed of live coals, he took the flat 
stones one by one and, placing a fish upon 
each with a sprinkling of salt, he carefully laid 
them upon the bed of coals. When the trout 
were browned nicely he pulled them off the hot 
embers with a forked stick. Then what a feast 
we had! I don’t think I ever tasted anything 
since that day as good as those fishes were. 
Late in the afternoon he caught several more, 
and then we left for home. 
They say that every pleasure has a sting, and 
I am sure that that day’s pleasure had; for that 
night I got stung badly when my old uncle ap- 
plied the gad. 
“The idea of your going off fishing on the 
Sabbath day with Jim Injun,” said he (whack! 
whack! whack! “Boo-hoo-hoo’’), ‘and being 
gone all day, and we expecting you to go to 
church with us, and Mr. Beecher there (whack! 
whack! whack! ‘‘Boo-hoo-hoo”), you good-for- 
nothing wicked boy you. I'll learn you better 
than to do that again.” (Whack! whack! whack! 
“Boo-hoo-hoo. Oh, don’t, I won’t never do it 
again, boo-hoo-hoo!”)—but enough of this. It 
gives me, even now, creepy feelings all over 
when I think of that whipping. 
It was a long time before I went fishing again 
on Sunday with old Jim Injun—not once again 
until I had grown too big to get a licking. After 
that Jim and I put in many a Sunday on that 
as well as other brooks and lakes around home; 
but as I have already said, I learned that day 
how to start a fire Injun fashion by the friction 
of two sticks, and I then thought that that 
knowledge much more than compensated for the 
unmerciful whaling that came afterward. 
By the way, let me here say before closing, 
that he could tell the time of day by the sun, 
or the shadows, or even by other signs; and 
the points of the compass by methods peculiar 
to his own people, and during our companion- 
ship he taught me much about the fauna and 
the flora; and also taught me lessons in wood- 
craft that I have never forgotten. TAC EN bee 
Mituurst, N. J. 
The source from which fire was originally 
drawn is absolutely hidden from us—as much so, 
almost, as is the origin of life. Guesses as to 
how it came to be known to man have been 
many. Myths tell how some demigod snatched 
fire from the sky, or of how it was stolen from 
a being who possessed it but hid it from all 
others, by some animal who distributed it abroad 
for the benefit of humanity. Legends tell us 
that a forest was fired by a bolt of lightning 
and that men finding the burning wood and ap- 
preciating. the grateful warmth, kept the fires 
alight. It has been conjectured that it was pro- 
duced by the friction of the dry branches of trees 
rubbing together; but whatever the means by 
which it was discovered by man, we know that 
this discovery took place long, long ago. Al- 
most the earliest evidences of human occupancy 
in this and other lands show that the people who 
dwelt in caves, who made the shell heaps, who 
split the bones of wild animals for their mar- 
row, or gathered the oysters, clams and scallops 
along the shore for their food were familiar 
with fire. 
The oldest method of making fire of which we 
have any knowledge is by various methods of 
friction, some of which have been practiced in 
America, in Africa and in the south seas within 
the memory of men still living. One of the 
simplest of these is by rubbing rapidly back and 
forth a sharp stick in a groove cut in a piece 
of soft, dry wood placed on the ground. This 
method which Tylor calls the “stick and groove” 
method was practiced in the south seas at Tahiti 
Tonga, Samoa, the Sandwich Islands and New 
Zealand. 
The fire drill—or, as we call them in this 
country, fire sticks—is more familiar and has 
been practiced up to within forty or fifty years 
by the dwellers on the plains, as earlier 1t was 
over most of North America.. An upright stick 
is twirled between the two palms, its lower point 
resting in a hole in a piece of soft wood on the 
ground. This primitive method is also prac- 
ticed in Australia, Sumatra, Caroline Islands, 
Kamtchatka, China and Africa, and to-day is in 
use in central India. The ancient figure copied 
from Tylor is a reproduction of an ancient 
Mexican painting. 
The work of kindling a fire in this way was 
long, slow and tiresome, and under unfavorable 
circumstances we have seen two men relieving 
each other, until the sweat rolled down their 
countenances before they kindled the spark. 
The Gauchos, a pastoral and half savage people 
who inhabit the high plains of South America, 
used a modification of this drill where the up- 
right stick was held against the breast or 
shoulder, and being bent a little was revolved by 
a rotary motion of the single hand. As time 
went on, however, the work of fire making was 
made more easy and the twirling came to be 
done by a thong or string applied to the up- 
right revolving stick, sometimes directly from 
the hands, sometimes by a bow. Our corre- 
spondent A. L. L. has described one of these 
methods, and we figure here a simple form of the 
thong drill as practiced by the Eskimo where 
the piece of wood which braces the upright 
‘became a man. 
revolving stick in place is held in the mouth of | 
the fire maker. 
The simplest form of bow drill is that where 
the upright stick is revolved a single turn of the 
bow string about it, being held in place by a 
piece of wood in the left hand while the right 
hand saws the bow back and forth. Higher yet 
is the pump drill in which the loose bow string 
makes many turns about the upright, which 
latter is supplied with a weight near its lower 
extremity furnishing a momentum to keep the 
drill moving. As the bow is moved up and 
down the string untwists and winds up again and 
the movement of the drill is continuous and the 
work easy. 
Martin’s Bear Story. 
Detroit, Mich.—Editor Forest and Stream: 
Some years ago I entered a number of photo- 
graphs in a competition held by the Forest AND 
STREAM, for amateurs, and while I was not 
fortunate enough to get a prize, one of the pic- 
tures was considered worthy a reproduction, and 
with a short descriptive article was published in 
the Forest AND STREAM. Slight mention was 
made in that article, that the subject of the photo- 
graph had performed a feat that was out of the 
ordinary. having unaided killed a- grizzly bear 
wih a club and butcher knife. 
As I do not think any account of this struggle 
has ever been published, except locally, it might 
prove of interest if you would reproduce the 
picture and print a short account of the affair. 
The photograph, as was stated before, was not 
a fancy sketch posed just for the occasion, but 
was a “real thing” picture, taken just as the pros- 
pector lived and as it were, impromptu. 
The individual in question was a Hessian, born 
in Hesse and coming to this country after he 
Martin Hickman was one of the 
strongest men I have ever met; not a large man, 
standing only about five feet nine or ten inches, 
and weighing not over 170 pounds; but every 
pound was bone, sinew and muscle. He was 
naturally a strong man, though his life for many 
years in the open, had no doubt added to the 
natural gifts he had been blessed with. 
Martin worked for me in prospecting and min- 
ing all one summer, and we became very well ac- 
quainted; but it was not for a long time that I 
was able to get him to tell me the bear story, 
though I had heard others give a second-hand ac- 
count of it. He had to be pressed to give his 
version of the affair, for as he expressed it, he 
did not want anyone to think “he vas a tam fool,” 
and therefore did not go about telling of the feat. 
We will try to tell the story as he told it, not 
trying, however, to give the dialect, which added 
a good deal to the original account, for Martin 
was that rare thing among Germans, witty, and 
his side remarks were sometimes very humorous. 
“Tt was in November and I was over in the 
Lost River country and had a hittle team of 
cayuse horses with a box wagon. I wanted to get 
over to the Rocky Bar country, and as there were 
some more miners who wanted to go also, they 
hired me to take them over. So I kill me two 
birds mit one stone. I agree mit them. We 
started early one morning, before daylight, as it 
was a long drive to get to our first stopping 
place, and the outfit took the road while it was 
dark and very cold. The poys had made a night 
of it and I had taken a few mineself; and be- 
tween the frequent potations and the cold we were 
a sleepy crowd. The rest did not pay much at- 
tention to me as I drove along; in fact; they were 
dozing most of the time, only awakening -long 
enough to take another drink, or grumble be- 
cause I was not driving fast enough. 
“We had gone along several miles and the gray 
of the fall morning was just showing over the 
high mountains back of the lava fields when my 
ponies stopped short and balked. I was much sur- 
prised at this, for they were very true and had 
never balked before. I tried to urge them on 
with whip and a little cussing, but no go. They 
seemed to see or smell something and were evi- 
dently frightened. I then got down from the 
wagon and walked up the wagon track for a 
short distance, looking from side to side to see 
what it was that the horses had discovered. I 
had gone about sixty yards or so from the wagon 
