tribe, who denied that any other means could be employed by an Aboriginal. Knowing well what he proposed to do, I encouraged Gulpie to make an experiment. He cut a wooden knife in a few moments, sat down beside a dry log, and having filled the longitudinal cracks with dry grass, which he had previously well rubbed in his hands, he commenced operations, and in a few seconds sent up a smoke. This method is shown in Fig. 233.
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| FIG. 233. |
In the north-eastern parts of Australia a very similar method, it is said, is adopted. In Fig. 234 the man is represented in a sitting posture. Having planted in the ground a strong stick, in which a longitudinal slit has been made, or in which there is a natural slit, and having filled the slit with dry powdered gum leaves or the like, he draws the stick towards him, and keeps it firmly in its place by pressing his chest against it. In his hand he holds the wooden knife, which he rubs rapidly across the stick until he gets fire.[1]
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| FIG. 234. |
- ↑ Mr. Robert Hughan says that the Aborigines of the Burnett, in New South Wales, get fire in the following manner:—They cut with the hatchet a hole in a dry fallen tree. They fill this hole with part of the dry ripe head of the flower-stalk of the xanthorrhœa, well powdered between the hands, and then turn the stem head downwards into the hole and twirl it. In a few seconds they get fire.
Mr. H. E. A. Meyer, writing of the Aborigines of the Encounter Bay tribe, in South Australia, says that they obtain fire by using the grass-tree. A split piece of the flower-stem of the grass-tree is placed upon the ground, the flat side uppermost, and the lower end of a thinner piece pressed upon it, while the upper part is held between the palms of the hands, and an alternate revolving motion is given to it by rubbing the hands backwards and forwards until it ignites.
Mr. Alfred Howitt states, in a letter to me, that the Aborigines of Gippsland used to get fire by twirling the peduncle of the grass-tree; and the Rev. Mr. Taplin, in his paper on the Narrinyeri tribe of Aborigines, says that the people of the Lower Murray get fire in the same way.
