In considering and determining the position of the Australian in the great families of mankind, it is interesting to compare his practices with those of other men whose lives are spent in the forest, and who know nothing of cities, and whose discoveries go not so far as to change the mode of life, but simply to render the life that is natural to them safer and more pleasurable.
In procuring fire it is probable that the only method known to the earliest races was that of rubbing two sticks together, an art suggested possibly, as my friend the Rev. Richard Taylor observes, by some man having noticed the accidental production of fire due to the friction of dry branches of trees in a gale. Getting fire by friction is known to many uncivilized peoples.
"The Kaffir blacksmith never need trouble himself about the means of obtaining a fire. Should he set up his forge in the vicinity of a kraal, the simplest plan is to send his assistant for a fire-brand from one of the huts. But if he should prefer, as is often the case, to work at some distance from the huts, he can procure fire with perfect certainty, though not without some labor. He first procures two sticks, one of them taken from a soft-wood tree, and the
a fire-brand in their hands, which was studiously refreshed from time to time as it became dull and evanescent.'"—Pre-Historic Times, p. 355.
Mr. Dove's statement is so important that it is to be regretted he did not give the facts on which he based the inference that the Tasmanians did not know how to procure fire. The skill displayed by the natives in the fabrication of weapons and utensils, their habits, and certain words in their language, would lead one to suppose that the art of making fire was known to them as to other savage peoples in a similar condition, but that, as amongst the Australians, it was not, probably, very often practised. Mr. Dove was possibly not very careful in making observations, or perhaps rash in drawing inferences.
Mr. James Scott, M.H.A., of Launceston, who is well acquainted with the habits of the Tasmanians, states, in a letter read at a meeting of the Royal Society of Tasmania on the 8th July 1873, "that the Aborigines, in moving from camp to camp, if possible, carried a fire with them, to save the labor of getting it by friction of two pieces of wood, the use of which was known to them."
The word for "fire" at Oyster Bay was, according to Dr. Milligan's vocabulary, Tonna; in South Tasmania, 'Ngune; and in the western and north-western parts, Winnaleah. The word for "tree" was Loatta; and for touch-wood (rotten wood), Weitree ouriatta and Weeawanghratta.
"In his history of the Ladrone Islands, Father Gobien asserts that fire, 'an element of such universal use, was utterly unknown to them, till Magellan, provoked by their repeated thefts, burned one of their villages. When they saw their wooden houses blazing, they first thought the fire a beast which fed upon wood, and some of them who came too near, being burnt, the rest stood afar off, lest they should be devoured, or poisoned, by the violent breathings of this terrible animal.' This fact is not mentioned in the original account of Magellan's voyage. Freycinet believes that the assertion of Father Gobien is entirely without foundation. The language, he says, of the inhabitants contains words for fire, burning charcoal, oven, grilling, boiling, &c.; and even before the advent of the Europeans pottery was well known. It is difficult, however, to get over the distinct assertion made by Gobien, which, moreover, derives some support from similar statements made by other travellers. Thus Alvaro do Saavedra states that the inhabitants of certain small islands in the Pacific, which he called 'Los Jardines,' but which cannot now be satisfactorily determined, stood in terror of fire because they had never seen it (Hackluyt Society, 1862, p. 178). Again, Wilkes tells us (United States Expl. Exped., vol. V., p. 18) that on the island of Fakaafo, which he calls 'Bowditch,' 'there was no sign of places for cooking nor any appearance of fire.' The natives also were very much alarmed when they saw sparks struck from flint and steel. Here, at least, we might have thought was a case beyond question or suspicion; the presence of fire could hardly have escaped observation—the marks it leaves are very conspicuous. If we cannot depend on such a statement as this, made by an officer in the United States Navy, in the official report of an expedition sent out especially for scientific purposes, we may well be disheartened and lose confidence in ethnological investigations. Yet the assertions of Wilkes are questioned, and with
