[398]. Kumlien’s description (Contributions, p. 37, Cumberland Gulf) would apply almost word for word to this spear, and Captain Parry, (Second Voyage, p. 509) describes a very similar one in use at Iglulik. The “Perch, headed with two sharp-hooked Bones,” for spearing salmon—called in the Grenlandsk Ordbog, kakiak, “en Lyster (med to eller tre Pigge)”—mentioned by Egede (Greenland, p. 108) is probably the same thing, and a similar spear is spoken of by Rae (Narrative, p. 172) as in use at Repulse Bay. A similar weapon, described by Dr. Rink as “Mit einem in brittischen Columbien vorkommenden identisch,” was found in east Greenland (Deutsche Geographische Blätter, vol. 9, p. 234). See the description of the spear found by Schwatka at Back’s Great Fish River (Nimrod in the North, p. 139), also described by Klutschak (Als Eskimo, etc., p. 120).
[399]. “Their own clumsy method of producing fire is by friction with two pieces of dry wood in the manner of a drill.”—(T. Simpson, Narrative, p. 162.)
[400]. Dr. Simpson, op. cit., p. 242.
[401]. Compare Nordenskiöld’s figure of the fire drill in use at Pitlekaj (Vega, vol. 2, p. 121), which has a similar bone for a socket, held not in the mouth but in the left hand.
[402]. Bessels, Naturalist, vol. 18, pt. 9, p. 867, speaks of a fire drill used at Smith Sound with a bow and a mouthpiece of ivory.
A Greenlander; seen by John Davis, in 1586, “beganne to kindle a fire, in his manner: he took a piece of a boord, wherein was a hole halfe thorow: into that he puts the end of a roũd sticke like unto a bedstaffe, wetting the end thereof in traine, and in fashion of a turner, with a piece of lether, by his violent motion doth very speedily produce fire.”—Hakluyt’s Voyages, etc. (1589), p. 782.
“They take a short Block of dry Fir Tree, upon which they rub another Piece of hard Wood, till by the continued Motion the Fir catches Fire.”—Egede, Greenland, p. 137.
“If their fire goes out, they can kindle it again by turning round a stick very quick with a string through a hole in a piece of wood.”—Crantz, History of Greenland, vol. 1, p. 145.
Lyon (Journal, p. 210) says that at Iglulik they were able to procure “fire by the friction of a pin of wood in the hole of another piece and pressed down like a drill from above.” This was worked with a bow and willow catkins were used for tinder. A man informed them that “he had learned it from his father rather for amusement than for utility; the two lumps of iron pyrites certainly answering the purpose a great deal better.”
“They have a very dextrous Method of kindling Fire; in order to which, they prepare two small Pieces of dry Wood, which having made flat, they next make a small Hole in each, and having fitted into these Holes a little cylindrical Piece of Wood, to which a Thong is fastened, they whirl it about thereby with such a Velocity, that by rubbing the Pieces of Wood one against the other, this Motion soon sets them on fire.”—Ellis, Voyage to Hudsons Bay, p. 234.