Travellers have informed me that they have seen the wooden knife or wedge employed by some men in the interior exactly in the same way as the Maories use it—that is to say, rubbed rapidly along a groove until the fine charcoal-dust at the extremity is ignited. The Aborigines of the Yarra, and others in Victoria, assert that they have never heard of this plan.
There are probably many other ways of using the fire-sticks known to the tribes in the interior; but all the evidence yet obtained shows that friction only—and no easier or better method—is resorted to by the Australians on the somewhat rare occasions when they have to practise the art of getting fire. Their habits, in the ordinary life of a tribe, would prevent the necessity of having recourse to the fire-sticks. Whether encamped or travelling, a tribe is always well provided with fire. It is the duty of the women to carry fire. A stick, a piece of decayed wood, or more often the beautiful seed-stem of the Banksia, is lighted at the fire the woman is leaving; and from her bag, which, in damp weather, she would keep filled with dry cones, or from materials collected in the forest, she would easily, during her journey, preserve the fire got at the last encampment.
Messengers, warriors on an expedition, and hunters, would sometimes have to use the fire-sticks, but in ordinary camp life rarely.[1]
It happens, consequently, that white men who have lived with the Aborigines, and who have become acquainted with many of their practices, are unable to say how fire is procured; and when asked to describe the process, state vaguely that two sticks are rubbed together, and that, after some exertion, one of them bursts into a flame. In all the processes the knack consists in keeping the charcoal-powder exactly in the place where there is the most friction, and it is needless to say the stick does not burst into a flame.
The art of making fire is, without doubt, known to all races of men.[2] The legends and stories and some curious practices of the highly-civilized peoples of Europe, show that their remote ancestors procured fire exactly in the same way as the Australian gets it, i.e., by friction.
- ↑ The statements made in the Life and Adventures of William Buckley lead one to suppose that getting fire by twirling the upright stick was rare. Men and women, when they left a camp, always carried a lighted piece of bark or a brand. In one part of his narrative he says that "in the winter months they are often much distressed for fire, and suffer greatly from hunger and cold." It is probable that experts only used the sticks for getting fire; and that small parties wandering from the main camp, and unaccompanied by fighting-men, may have had often to endure cold, when by carelessness or accident the fire they carried was extinguished.
- ↑ It is believed by some that the natives of Tasmania did not know how to obtain fire. It is considered proper in Europe to describe these and the natives of Australia as the most degraded amongst all the races of mankind. Speaking of the Tasmanians, Lubbock says:—"They have no means of expressing abstract ideas; they have not even a word for a 'tree.' Although fire was well known to them, some tribes at least appear to have been ignorant whence it was originally obtaiued, or how, if extinguished, it could be re-lighted. 'In all their wanderings,' says Mr. Dove, 'they were particularly careful to bear in their hands the materials for kindling a fire. Their memory supplies them with no instances of a period in which they were obliged to draw on their inventive powers for the means of resuscitating an element so essential to their health and comfort as flame. How it came originally into their possession is unknown. Whether it may be viewed as the gift of nature, or the product of art and sagacity, they cannot recollect a period when it was a desideratum. . . . . . . It was the part of the females especially to carry
