Rensselaer Republican, Volume 22, Number 38, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 May 1890 — FIRE FROM FRICTION. [ARTICLE]

FIRE FROM FRICTION.

Hew Savage People Obtain Fira by the Bobbing of Dry Stiaka. One of the first things every child learns about fire is thatcertain gavage races produce it by the rubbing of two sticks, says the American Analyst. Delightfully’ simple as the description of the process is, any one who has tried to perform the operation will certify that it is by no means an easy-one. and very likely will afterward declare fervently upon oath that the thing can not be done. Many travelers have tried under the most auspicious circumstances —in countries where the production of fire .in this manner is in every-day use, with a grinning native to choose the weapons and give a practical exhibition of his own skill—and after many joint and muscle aching experiments have given up the attempt in a state of mind bordering on temporary insanity. “We ourselves,” writes a traveler, “have been successful just often enough to understand ■the uncertainty of the operation.” In the first place, judgment is required in choosing the sticks. The immense variety of tropic vegetation furnishes many sorts that answer the purpose, but many also that will not. An expert sometimes may be long in finding two species suitable. One must be light and soft, the other heavy, of close texture, and both must be dry. Upon the heavy bit he cuts two grooves in the form of a cross, fixes it tight—with his prehensive toes, probably --sharpens the light bit, places it in the intersections of the cross, and twirls it steadily between his palms. Gradually tinder forms in the shape of dust, which drops down the grooves in a tiny heap on either side. If the twirling be interrupted for a second that represents so much waste time, which must be recovered at enormous interest. If the heavy piece shifts the tinder is displaced. But the power of originating fire in this manner with facility is not an accomplishment possessed by every one, even in the countries where the practice exists. The inhabitants of the tropics do not always depend wholly upon their two sticks; among many tribes they are nothing but a last resort. They have other methods of producing fire. A native carries in his betel-box, perhaps, a fragment of hard pottery and a morsel of dry fungus. Fixing a bit of the latter in the hollow of the former, and holding it down with the thumb—in such a way that it follows the edge—he smartly strikes his box, which is bamboo of course, just as if he were handling flint and steel. The fungus tinder is glowing in an instant. The friction methods in use in different parts of the world are various. One of the simplest is with the stick and groove—a blunt-pointed stick being run along a groove of its own making in a piece of wood lying on the ground. In Tahiti Mr. Darwin saw a native produce fire in a few seconds, but only succeeded himself after much labor. This device is employed in New Zealand, the Sandwich islands. Tonga, Samoa, and the Radaek islands. Instead of rubbing the movable stick backward and forward, other tribes make it rotate rapidly in a round hole in the stationary piece of wood in the manner referred to, thus making, as happily designated, a fire-drill. This device has been observed in Australia, Kamschatka, Sumatra, and the Carolines, among the Yeddahs of Ceylon, throughout a great part of South Africa, among the Esquimaux and Indian tribes of North America, in the West Indies, in Central America, and as far south as the Straits of Magellan. It was also employed by the ancient Mexicans, and Mr. Taylor gives a quaint picture of the operation from Mexican MS., in which a man, halfkneeling on the ground, is causing the stick to rotate between the palms of his own hands. This simple method of rotarion seems to be generally in use, but various devices have been resorted" to for the purpose of diminishing the labor and hastening the result. The Guaeho of the Pampas takes “an elastic stick about eighteen inches Ion? presses one end to his breast and the other in the hole of a piece of wood, and then rapidly turns the curved part like a carpenter’s center-bit.” In other cases the rotation is affected by means of a cord or throng wound around the drill and pulled alternately by this end and that. A further advance was made by some North American Indians, who appear to have applied the principle of the bow-drill, and the still more ingenious pump-drill was used by the Iroquois Indians. For a full description of these instruments we must refer the reader to Mr. Taylor’s valuable chapter in his “Researches.” These methods of producing fire are but rarely used in Europe, and only in connection with superstitious observances. We read in Wuttke that some time a<m the authorities of a Micklenberg village ordered a wild fire to be lighted against the murrain among cattle. For two hours they strove vainly to obtain a spark, but the fault was not ascribed to the quality of the wood or to Mie dampness of the atmosphere, but to the stubbornness of an old lady who, objecting to the superstition, would not put out her night light Such a fire to be efficient must burn alone. At last the strong-minded woman was compelled to give in. Fire was obtained, but of bad quality, for it did not stop the murrain. A belief in the peculiar virtues of tire obtained by friction of wood has at one time oi another prevailed among nations ol Indo-European race, and not many years age the obtaining of need (tire) was practiced in the highlands of Scotland. One of its principal virtues has always been considered to be its efficiency against disease.