Boy Scouts Handbook / The First Edition, 1911

by Boy Scouts of America

"Any of you got any matches?" I asked. "No; left 'em all in our coats," was their answer.

"Well," said I, "I have one. Shall I use it to get a new course from the compass, or shall we make a fire and stay here till morning?"

All voted to camp for the night. There was now a cold rain.

We groped into a hollow where we got some dead wood, and by using our knives got some dry chips from the inside of a log. When all was ready we gathered close around, and I got out the one match. I was about to strike it when the younger of the men said:

"Say, Seton, you are not a smoker; Jack is. Hadn't you better give him that match?"

There was sense in this. I have never in my life smoked. Jack was an old stager and an adept with matches. I handed it to him. "Rrrp-fizz"--and in a minute we had a fire.

With the help of the firelight we now found plenty of dead wood; we made three blazing fires side by side, and after an hour we removed the centre one, then raked away all the hot ashes, and all lay down together on the warm ground. When the morning came the rain ceased. We stretched our stiffened limbs and made for camp. Yes, there it was in plain view two miles away across a fearful canyon. Three steps more on that gloomy night and we should have been over the edge of that canyon and dashed to the bottom.

How to Make Fire by Rubbing Sticks

"How do the Indians make a fire without matches?" asked a boy who loved to "play Indian." Most of us have heard the answer to this. "The Indians use a flint and steel, as our own fathers and mothers did one hundred years ago, and before they had flint and steel they used rubbing-sticks." We have all read about bringing fire out of two sticks by rubbing them together. I tried it once for an hour, and I know now I never would have got it in a thousand years as I was doing it. Others have had the same experience; consequently, most persons look upon this as a sort of fairy tale, or, if they believe it to be true, they think it so difficult as to be worth no second thought. All scouts, I find, are surprised and greatly interested to learn that not only is it possible, it is easy, to make a friction {71} fire, if you know how; and hopeless, if you don't. I have taught many boys and men (including some Indians) to do it, and some have grown so expert that they make it nearly as quickly as with an old-fashioned sulphur match. When I first learned from Walter Hough, who learned from the Indians, it took me from five to ten minutes to get a blazing fire--not half an hour, as some books have it. But later I got it down to a minute, then to thirty-one seconds from the time of taking up the rubbing-sticks to having a fine blaze, the time in getting the first spark being about six seconds.

My early efforts were inspired by book accounts of Indian methods, but, unfortunately, I have never yet seen a book account that was accurate enough to guide anyone successfully in the art of fire-making. All omit one or other of the absolute essentials, or dwell on some triviality. The impression they leave on those who know is that the writers did not.