It is well so to notch the fire-block, that the wood-dust, as it is formed by the rubbing, should all run into one place:  it will then glow with a smouldering heat, ready to burst out into an available flame with a very little fanning, as soon as a degree of heat sufficient to ignite tinder has been attained.  Tinder is a great convenience, in ensuring that the fire, once obtained, shall not be lost again; but it is not essential to have it.

There are many ways of rubbing the sticks together, in use among different nations.  Those curious in the matter should consult Tylor’s ‘Early History of Mankind.’  But the traveller will not obtain much assistance from these descriptions, as it will be out of his power to obtain fire by any but the simplest of them, on a first trial.  He is only likely to succeed at first by working at leisure, with perfectly dry wood.  Even savages, who practise the art all their lives, fail to procure fire in very wet weather, when the shelter is bad.  Of the plans employed by savages, the simplest is that in use both in South Africa and in Australia.

[Fig 1 as described].

The Australian blacks use the flower-stem of the grass-tree, which is of a tough pithy nature, and about one inch in diameter.  The operation of making the fire is assisted by the use of a little charcoal-powder, which, in Australia, is found on the bark of almost every tree, from the constant passage of grass-fires over the ground.  The process is as follows:—­One piece of the stick is notched in the middle, fig. 1, and the notch slightly hollowed out; another is roundly pointed at one end.  The black fellow, being seated on the ground, holds down one end of the notched stick with each foot, fig. 2, and placing the point of the other stick into the notch, twirls it rapidly and forcibly between the palms of his hands.  In doing this his hands gradually slip down the stick, and he has to shift them rapidly up again, which loses time:  but two people, seated opposite, can alternately take up the rubbing, and more easily produce fire.  A little of the above-mentioned powdered charcoal is dropped into the notch during the operation.  In a very few minutes red-hot powdery ashes commence to work up out of the notch, which falling on a small heap of tow, or of dry tow-like bark, or lint, or cotton stuff, is quickly blown into a flame.  The Africans carry the drill-stick, which in shape and size is like an arrow, in a quiver with their arrows, and the fire-block—­a stick three inches long and one in diameter, of a different wood—­as a pendant to their necklace.

A plan more practicable to an unpractised hand is that in use among some of the North American Indians.  I copy the illustration of it from Schoolcraft’s work upon those people.