Fig. 42. Malay Fire Sticks.
(Cat. No. 129775, U. S. N. M. Models in bamboo made by Mr. Hough after Prof. A. R. Wallace’s description. The Malay Archipelago, p. 332.)
So in Australia, while the rotary drill is the usual way, some tribes have acquired the art of producing fire with knife or rubber, that is, the sawing method presumably under foreign influence.[44]
III.—FIRE-MAKING BY PLOWING.
One of the most marked of fire-making methods in its distribution is that pursued by the Pacific Islanders, confined almost entirely to the Polynesian cultural area. It has spread to other islands, however, being met with among the Negritos of New Britain:
They rub a sharpened piece of hard stick against the inside of a piece of dried split bamboo. This has a natural dust that soon ignites. They use soft wood when no bamboo can be procured, but it takes longer to ignite. The flame is fed with grass.[45]
There is a close connection between the Malay sawing method and this, as there is a decided Malay preponderance in the make-up of the population of the Islands.
The fire-sticks shown ([fig. 43]) were procured by Mr. Harold M. Sewall, at Samoa, and deposited in the museum by him.
The wood is a light corky variety, probably of the Hibiscus tiliacus, which is used for this purpose at Tahiti, or perhaps it is of the paper mulberry. The rubber may be of some hard wood, although fire may be made by means of a rubber of the same kind of wood as that of the hearth, though no doubt it requires a longer time to make fire if this is done. In the Sandwich Islands, Mr. Franklin Hale Austin, secretary of the King, states that the rubber is of koh or ohia, that is, hard wood and the hearth of hon, or soft wood, and the friction is always in soft woods; this is true, I believe, everywhere this method is practiced, in spite of the fact that a soft rubber on hard wood will answer as well.
Lieut. William I. Moore, U. S. Navy, gave the writer a complete description of the manipulation of the Samoan fire-getting apparatus.