Fig. 43. Fire-making Sticks (a Showing Groove).
(Cat. No. 130675, U. S. N. M. Samoa. Deposited by Harold M. Sewall.)
The blunt pointed stick is taken between the clasped hands, somewhat as one takes a pen, and projected forward from the body along the groove at the greatest frictional angle consistent with the forward motion which has been found to be from 40 to 45 degrees. Kneeling on the stick the man forces the rubber forward, slowly at first, with a range of perhaps 6 inches, till the wood begins to be ground off and made to go into a little heap at the end of the groove; then he gradually accelerates the speed and moves with a shorter range until, when he pushes the stick with great velocity, the brown dust ignites. This is allowed to glow and if it is required to be transferred to dry leaves or chips of wood it is done by means of a tinder made of frayed or worn tapa cloth.
The groove ([fig. 43]a) is the most characteristic feature of this apparatus, there being apparently no definite form of implements for this purpose. Fire is made on any billet of dry wood that is available. It is not necessary to cut a slot, or even a groove, the hard wood rubber will form one, so that there is no more need of apparatus than among the Navajos, where two bits of yucca stalk collected near by form the fire tools.
That making fire by this way is difficult to those inexperienced in it is not strange. Mr. Darwin found it quite so, but at last succeeded. The Samoan gets fire in forty seconds, and so great is the friction and the wood so well adapted that Mr. Austin, before quoted, says it sometimes actually bursts into flame.
The Australians in some parts use a method very much like the one described. They rub a knife of wood along a groove made in another stick previously filled with tinder.[46]
IV.—PERCUSSION.
1. FLINT AND PYRITES.
Ac primum silici scintillam excudit Achates
Suscepitque ignum foliis atque arida circum