How man received the gift of fire we have no means of knowing. It is a Moslem fable that the angel Gabriel brought it to our first parents. Poetry says that the winds blew through the grove, that two trees became ignited from continued attrition, and that Adam beholding the lighted copse fled, turned back, caught the glow of the flame, and then tried various means to obtain it. Again, it tells us that a flint-shaft, aimed at a beast, ground against a rock, and elicited sparks of fire, which led Adam to rub stones together over dry leaves, while Eve gently cherished the kindling flame. More than one ancient people ascribe it to the rubbing of two pieces of wood together, a practice still adopted among barbarous tribes. But however this might be, fire must have been possessed in earliest times for the preparation of human food, as well as for the practice of those arts which are ascribable to the fatherhood of Tubal-Cain.
The presence of the metals, and particularly iron, must have become, in various ways, too obvious to allow the art of smelting the ores to have remained long undiscovered. The detection of virgin fragments, or the accidental effect of fires on the more fusible ores, accounts at once for the strange fictions which existed among the ancients on this subject, especially that of the accidental conflagration of a forest, and the consequent fluxion of some of the metal, from ores lying exposed on, or near the surface. It is a natural conjecture, that in a little time after the deluge, and long before the earth could have been peopled by the posterity of Noah, a large part of it must have become covered with wood. Its removal from many spots would, therefore, be indispensable. Now, the most obvious method of clearing any space from wood is the setting it on fire: and as in the most mineral countries there are veins of metallic ores lying contiguous to the surface of the earth, these being fused while the woods growing over them were burning, might have suggested the first idea of the process of smelting. To adopt a poet’s notion—
“Thus powerful gold first raised its lofty head,
And brass, and silver, and ignoble lead:
When shady woods on lofty mountains grown,
Felt scorching fires, whether from thunder thrown,
Or else by men’s design the flames arose—
Whatever ’t was that gave these flames their birth,
Which burnt the towering trees and scorched the earth;
Hot streams of silver, gold, and lead, and brass,