Fig. 72.—Bushman drilling fire (after Chapman).
The fire-drill is a means of converting mechanical force into heat till the burning-point of wood is reached. But all that is really wanted is a glowing hot particle or spark, and this can be far more easily got in other ways. Breaking a nodule of iron pyrites picked up on the sea-shore, and with a bit of flint striking sparks from it on tinder, is a way of fire-making quite superior to the use of the wooden drill. It was known to some modern savages, even the miserable natives of Tierra del Fuego; to the præhistoric men of Europe, as appears from the bits of pyrites found in their caves; and of course to the old civilized world, as witness the Greek name of the mineral, puritēs or “fiery.” Substitute for this a piece of iron, and we have the flint-and-steel, the ordinary apparatus of nations from their entry into the iron age till modern times. Yet even this has now been so discarded that the old-fashioned kitchen tinder-box with its flint and U-shaped steel, and damper for preparing the tinder from scraps of burnt linen to light the brimstone-match with, has become a curiosity worth securing when found by chance in some farmhouse. Mention need hardly be made here of the burning-lens and the concave mirror known in ancient Greece, nor of the wooden condensing syringe (much like that described in our books on physics) known in the Chinese region; these are rather curious than practically important. Quite otherwise with the invention of the lucifer-match, dating from about 1840. Its action depends on phosphorus igniting by being rubbed, the head of an ordinary lucifer being of an inflammable composition, containing chlorate or nitrate of potash, which is fired by particles of phosphorus mixed in with it; for the safety-match, these particles of phosphorus are put, not in the match-head, but on the rubber instead.
In the low levels of civilization the hut is often so small that the fire has to be made outside. But when it becomes spacious enough, the fire of logs burns on the hard-trodden earth in the middle of the hut, the smoke finding its way out as it can by door and cracks. Those who have chanced to spend a night lying on the ground with their feet to the fire in such a dwelling, know both what place the fire has in barbaric comfort, and how that comfort was increased when builders took the trouble to make a smoke-hole in the roof, and afterwards came to a real chimney. The history of artificial warming from this point lies so plainly before us as not to need a long description. From the fire of a few sticks on the cottage hearth, we come to the wide fire-places in the halls of country houses, with their fire-dogs, after the fashion of the middle ages. Then come the coal fires in open grates, the closed stoves, and the arrangements for warming the house with currents of hot air, or circulating pipes of hot water.
From house-warming we come to cookery. The heat applied in cooking food, bursting the cells and softening the tissues so as to make it easier to chew, is an important aid to digestion, saving energy which would be wasted on assimilating raw flesh or vegetables. It would not indeed be impossible for man to live on uncooked food, and perhaps the nearest approach to this is found on some coral islands of the Pacific, where raw fish and coco-nuts form a great part of the native diet. Low tribes, especially half-starved wanderers of the deserts, such as the Australians, eat insects, grubs, shellfish, and small reptiles, raw as they find them; and Brazilian forest-men have been seen to imitate the ant-bear by poking a stick into an ant-hill, and letting the ants run up it into their mouths. These practices shock Europeans, who themselves however have no scruples as to oysters and cheese-mites, to which they happen to be accustomed. But these rude tribes know how to cook, as indeed all mankind do, the familiar definition of man as the “cooking animal” having no proved exception, ancient or modern. Civilized nations have come so thoroughly to this way of assisting nature, that they cook almost everything they eat, only keeping up primitive habits in eating nuts, berries, and other fruit raw as more pleasing to the taste. It has long been looked on as a sign of low culture to eat raw meat, like the Eurytanes of the interior of Greece whom Thukydides mentions as “most ignorant in their speech, and said to be raw-eaters (ömophagoi).” Even the native tribes of New England were struck with this habit among the roving race of the far north, whom they called accordingly Eskimantsic or “raw-flesh-eaters,” a name they still bear in its French form Esquimaux.
The roughest ways of cooking are to be seen among savages, who broil their meat on the burning logs, or roast it stuck on the primitive spit, a pointed stake planted sloping over the fire, or bury it in the hot embers as boys do chestnuts or potatoes. From this latter mode comes the invention of the oven, which in its simplest form may be a hollow tree set on fire and smouldering inside, or a pit dug in the ground and heated by a wood-fire, often with red-hot stones put in to help the baking. Brazilian tribes set up four posts with a grating of branches across, on which they laid their game and fish with a slow fire underneath. Meat prepared on such a boucan will keep a long while; the pirates of the West Indies used thus to prepare their stores of meat, whence comes the word bucaneer. To the buffalo-hunting tribes of North America belongs the invention of pemmican, meat dried and pounded for keeping, while in many parts of the world people know how to dry sheets or strips of meat in the hot sun; this is called jerked meat, and will keep. The use of hot stones in baking has just been mentioned. From this the important art of boiling food may have been derived. In many parts of the world, among tribes who do not know how to make an earthen pot, there is found the curious art of stone-boiling, which is a sort of wet baking. The Assinaboins of North America have their name, which means “stone-boilers,” from their old practice of digging a hole in the ground, lining it with a piece of the slaughtered animal’s hide, and then putting in the meat with water, and hot stones to boil it. Tribes of the far West actually managed by means of red-hot stones to boil salmon and acorn-porridge in their baskets made of close-plaited roots of the spruce fir. The process of stone-boiling has lasted on even in Europe where found convenient for heating water in wooden tubs. Linnæus on his northern tour found the Bothland people brewing beer in this way, and to this day the “rude Carinthian boor” drinks such “stone-beer,” as it is called. As soon as the cooks anywhere are provided with earthen pots or metal kettles, boiling over the fire becomes easy. Yet it is curious to notice the absence of boiled meats from the feasts of the Homeric heroes, where there is so much about the joints stuck on spits to roast, and the vengeful Odysseus rolling to and fro on his bed is compared to an eager roaster turning a stuffed paunch before the blazing fire. Among the old Northmen it was otherwise, for it is told in the Edda how the warriors feast every night in Walhalla on the sodden flesh of the boar Sæhrimnir, who is daily boiled in the huge kettle, and comes to life again ready for the morrow’s hunt.
The simplest ways of making bread, such as seem to have come in with the earliest cultivation of grain, answer so well for some purposes that they may still be seen almost unchanged. Thus in a north country cottage the housewife moistens the oatmeal and kneads it into dough, which spread out thin is baked into oatcakes on the hot iron girdle (it used to be a hot stone); and the damper of the Australian colonist is as simply made with flour and water in thick cakes, baked in the embers. These take us back near the primitive stages of an art which almost more than any other has civilized mankind. Such unleavened bread being first in use, the invention of leavened bread would follow as a matter of course, by the sour dough on the uncleaned vessel fermenting into leaven (French levain, lightening), which starts fermentation through the fresh dough, disengaging bubbles of carbonic acid within it which expand it into a spongy mass. In later times the yeast from brewing was found to be a better means than leaven; and there are modern processes of introducing the gas by means of baking-powder (such as sal-aëratus or aërated salt, bicarbonate of soda), or the bread may be aërated by mixing the carbonic acid gas mechanically. The other great means of preparing farinaceous or starchy food is by boiling, which lets the starch out to mix with the water by bursting the tiny granules in which it is enclosed. Rice boiled whole furnishes about half the food of mankind, and among other staple articles of vegetable food are the various kinds of pap or porridge made with wheat, barley, oats, maize, sago, cassava, &c. Looking over a modern cookery-book, it is seen what an endless list of dishes and sauces have been contrived by clever cooks, to please the palate and make one wish for more. As to progress in cookery in this way, no doubt the moderns have left the ancients behind. But, after all, the main purpose of cooking food is to bring it into a proper condition for keeping up and working the human machine, body and mind. Examining it from this point of view, it is curious to notice what an old-world business it is. Its main processes of roasting, baking, and boiling, belong to the barbaric stage of culture, and had their origin in ages before history.
The liquors drunk by man may next be noticed. Savage tribes such as the Australians were water-drinkers when discovered by the Europeans, and even the Hottentots and North American Indians knew no fermented drinks. It is difficult to suppose that an indulgence so tempting would ever be forgotten, if once known; so that possibly the ancestors of these peoples may have from the first been ignorant of the art of fermenting liquor. But in most countries, especially where grain and fruit were cultivated, one would think that the process must sooner or later discover itself, by the accident of some suitable juice or mash being left to stand. In Mexico the milky juice of the aloe is fermented into pulque; in Asia and Africa palms are tapped for palm-wine or toddy; cider from apple-juice, and mead from honey and water, are well known; the Tatars ferment their mares’ milk into kumiss. Especially liquors of the beer kind prevail widely; the first mentioned in history is the beer brewed from barley by the ancient Egyptians, whence may perhaps be traced the ancient ale or beer of Europe; allied to it are the kvass or rye-beer of Russia, the pombe or millet-beer of Africa, the so-called rice-wine of the Chinese, the chicha made with maize or cassava by the natives of America. Wine seems not less ancient, and the Egyptian paintings show the vineyards, the wine-presses, the wine-jars; indeed, wine-making is still much what it was in those early ages of history. In ancient times it is curious to notice the frank undoubting delight of men in intoxicating drink, as a divinely given means of drowning care and stimulating dulness into wild joy. They drank it solemnly in their religious feasts and offered it to their gods. The ancient bards of the Vedic hymns thought no ill in singing of Indra the Heaven-god, reeling drunk with the libations of the sacred soma poured out by his worshippers, and in later ages the Greeks chanted in bacchanal processions the praises of the beneficent Dionysos, who made all nations happy with the care-dispelling juice of the grape. But in early times also there comes into view an opposite doctrine. The guardians of religion, sensible of the evil of drunkenness, begin to proclaim not only excess as hateful, but the very tasting of strong drink a sin. The Brahmans, although the libation of the soma remains by old tradition among their sacred rites, yet account the drinking of spirituous liquors one of the five great sins; while in the old rival religion of Buddha, one of the ten precepts or commandments which the novice promises to obey, is that forbidding the use of intoxicating liquor. Though the religion of Mohammed arose in great measure out of Judaism and Christianity, he cast off their ancient honour for wine and its use in sacred rites, forbidding it as an abomination. It was not till the middle ages that distilled spirit, though more ancient in the East, came into use among the western nations. It was generally accepted as beneficial, as is well seen in the name of “water of life,” Latin aquavitæ, French eau-de-vie, Irish usquebaugh (for shortness whisky). Alcoholic spirit is now produced in immense quantities from the refuse of wine-making, brewing, sugar-refining, &c. Its employment as a habitual stimulant is among the greatest evils of the modern world, bringing about in the low levels of the population a state of degradation hardly matched in the worst ages of history. On the other hand, modern civilized life has gained in comfort by taking to the use of warm slightly stimulant drinks. Tea, at first valued by the Buddhist monks in Central Asia as a drug to keep the ascetic awake for his nightly religious duties, seems to have been introduced as a beverage in China at about the Christian era, and has spread from thence all over the world. Coffee is at home in Arabia, and the world owes its general use to the Moslems. Chocolate was brought by the Spaniards from old Mexico, where it was a favourite drink. With these, mention has to be made of tobacco, also an importation from America, where at the time of the discovery it was smoked by natives of both the north and south continent.
In here describing fires and fire-places ([p. 264]), wood has been taken as the primitive fuel. Indeed, the fire of fallen boughs made at a picnic in the woods may take our minds fairly back to præhistoric life. When in the savage hut the logs are piled on the earthen floor, this simple hearth already becomes the gathering-place of the family and the type of home. But in treeless districts the want of fuel is one of the difficulties of life, as where on the desert plains the buffalo-hunter has to pick up for the evening fire the droppings which he calls “buffalo-chips” or “bois de vache.” Even in woodland countries, as soon as people collect in villages, the firewood near by is apt to run short. When some American Indians were asked what reason they supposed had brought the white men to their country, they answered quite simply that no doubt we had burnt up all our wood at home, and had to move. The guess was so far good, that something of the kind must really have happened had we depended on the fuel from our forests and peat-bogs, for the supply in England was giving out. Thus what was in old times the forest-land of Kent and Sussex, and has still kept its name of the Weald (i.e. wood), is not now well-timbered, but this is because in Queen Elizabeth’s time it had been stripped to make charcoal for the iron furnaces. Indeed, there then seemed danger that as population increased and manufactures throve, England might become like North China now, where in the cold weather people huddle at home wrapped in furs, fuel being too scarce except for the cooking-stove. But instead of this coming to pass, there took place an industrial change in England, which multiplied the population and brought on our present prosperity. This was the use of coal, on which our modern manufacturing system depends. Even for household purposes the coal-cellar has almost superseded the wood-stack, and the blazing yule-log has become a picturesque relic of the past. The very word coal, which in the English Bible keeps its original sense of burning wood, has since been usurped by the mineral. It must not, however, be supposed that the use of coal was only discovered in modern times. The Chinese have mined it from time immemorial. In the thirteenth century, the famous Venetian traveller, Marco Polo, related that in Cathay there is a kind of black stones, which are dug out of veins in the mountains, and burn like faggots; and I can tell you (he says) that if you put them on the fire in the evening so that they catch well, they will burn all night and even be alight in the morning. That this was told and received as a wonder in Europe, shows how unfamiliar the use of coal then was. Though lithanthrax or “stone-coal” was not unknown to the ancients, its full importance to modern life only came gradually into view. Having first been brought in for economy to meet the scarcity of wood, it afterwards became, when applied to the steam-engine, an almost boundless source of power for all mechanical work. A steam-engine, for every few shovelfuls of coal its furnace is fed with, will do the day’s work of a horse. Thus the yearly output of millions of tons of steam-coal in Great Britain alone, furnishes a supply of force in comparison with which what was formerly available from wind-mills and water-mills and the labour of men and beasts was quite small, while the workman’s task becomes more and more that of directing this brute force to grind and hammer, to spin and weave, to carry across land and sea. It is like the difference between driving the waggon and carrying the sacks of corn to market on one’s own back. It is an interesting problem in political economy to reckon the means of subsistence in our country during the agricultural and pastoral period, and to compare them with the resources we now gain from coal, in doing home-work and manufacturing goods to exchange for foreign produce. Perhaps the best means of realizing what coal is to us, will be to consider, that of three Englishmen now, one at least may be reckoned to live by coal, inasmuch as without it the population would have been so much less.
The Australian savage would catch up a blazing brand from the camp-fire, to light him into the dark forest and scare away the demons. Thus there is as yet no difference between his primitive means of artificial heat and light. The two begin to separate when resinous pine-splints or the like are set aside to serve as natural flambeaux, and from this the next step is to make artificial flambeaux, of which the commonest is the twist or torch (from Latin torquere) of oakum dipped in pitch or wax. Till this century we used torches much as the ancient Romans did, but they are now seldom to be seen, and by their disuse the picturesque side of life loses many striking effects of torchlight glare and shadow on banquet and procession—the delight of painters and poets. Not half the passers-by in old-fashioned streets now know that the extinguishers on the iron railings were to put out the links or torches carried to light the company to their coaches. The candle looks as though it might have been invented from the torch. The rushlight, made of the pith of the rush dipped in melted fat, was in common use in Pliny’s time, as was also the wax or tallow candle with its yarn wick. The old classic lamp was a flattish oval vessel with a nozzle (i.e., nostril) at one end for the wick to come out at. Simple as this construction is, it has had a long unchanged use. Museums have few Greek and Roman objects more plentiful than such earthenware lamps, nor more exquisite specimens of metal-work than the bronze ones; and to this day the traveller off the main road in Spain or Italy is lighted to his bedroom with a brass stand-lamp much after the manner of the ancients, with its pick-wick hanging to it by a chain. The lamp only came into its improved modern make about a century ago, when Argand let the air in from below, and put on the glass chimney to set up a draught. The gas-lamp is still later, only having come into practical use during the last sixty years. But it is curious to notice that natural gas-lighting had long been known in places where decomposing bituminous beds underground set free carburetted hydrogen. Thus at the famous fire-temples of Baku (west of the Caspian), a hollow cane was stuck in the ground near the altar, through which the gas rose and burnt at its mouth, while the pilgrim fire-worshippers prostrated themselves and adored the sacred flame. In China, at salt springs where such a supply of natural gas comes up, the practical-minded people are content to lay it on through bamboos into the buildings, to boil the brine-kettles and light up the works.
