H - Tasmanian Fire-sticks

Summary

SINCE going to press I have received from Mr. Rayner a further account of fire making by Tasmanian aborigines. This account is in answer to my enquiry addressed to him through Mr. J. B. Walker. It. runs as follows:–“A piece of flat wood was obtained, and a groove was made the full length in the centre. Another piece of wood about a foot in length with a point like a blunt chisel was worked with nearly lightning rapidity up and down the groove till it caught in a flame. As soon as the stick caught in a blaze, a piece of burnt fungus, ori punk, as it is generally termed, was applied, which would keep alight, &c, &c. I cannot say what kind of wood it was. My father has seen them light it. The piece with the groove, he said, was hard, the other soft. The blacks in Australia get fire by the same method. I have seen that done. I think it almost impossible for a white man to do it for I have seen it tried and always prove a failure.” Rayner's account agrees in the main with Cotton's, and we are therefore in possession of accounts of three distinct methods of fire production, viz.: (1) by means of flint and tender; (2) by means of fire drill and socket; and (3) by means of stick and groove.