قراءة كتاب The Book of Camp-Lore and Woodcraft
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CHAPTER I
FIRE MAKING BY FRICTION
- HOW TO MAKE A FIRE-BOARD, BOW, DRILL AND THIMBLE
- INDIAN LEGEND OF THE SOURCE OF FIRE
- RECORD FIRE-MAKERS
- RUBBING-STICK OUTFIT
- ESKIMO THIMBLE
- BOW, BOW-STRING, THIMBLE, FIRE-BOARD, FIRE-PAN
- TINDER, CHARRED RAGS, PUFF BALLS
- FIRE-MAKERS OF THE BALKAN
- FIRE WITHOUT A BOW, CO-LI-LI, THE FIRE SAW
- FIRE PUMPING OF THE IROQUOIS
- PYROPNEUMATIC APPARATUS
FIRE MAKING BY FRICTION
When the "what-is-its" of Pithecantropus erectus age and other like hob-goblin men were moping around the rough sketch of an earth, there were no camp-fires; the only fire that these creatures knew was that which struck terror to their hearts when it was vomited forth from volcanic craters, or came crashing among them in the form of lightning. No wonder that the primitive men looked upon fire as a deity, no doubt an evil deity at first but one who later became good.
When the vast fields of ice covered Europe during the glacier period and forced men to think or die, necessity developed a prehistoric Edison among the Neanderthal men, who discovered how to build and control a fire, thus saving his race from being frozen in the ice and kept on cold storage, like the hairy rhinoceros and elephant of Siberia.
The fire of this forgotten and unknown glacier savage was the forerunner of our steam-heaters and kitchen ranges; in fact, without it we could have made no progress whatever, for not only the humble kitchen range, but the great factories and power-plants are all depending upon the discovery made by the shivering, teeth-chattering savage who was hopping around and trying to keep himself warm among the European glaciers.
But we people of the camp-fires are more interested in primitive fires just as the Neanderthal men built them, than we are in the roaring furnaces of the steel works, the volcano blast furnaces, or any of the scientific, commercialized fires of factory and commerce.
What we love is the genial, old-fashioned camp-fire in the open, on the broad prairie, on the mountainside, or in the dark and mysterious forests, where, as our good friend Dr. Hornaday says,
Mesquite roots and sagebrush loose,
Dead bamboo and smelly teak,
And with fagots blazing bright
Burn a hole into the night—
Not long ago the author was up North in the unmapped lake country of Canada, and while camping on the portage between two wild and lonely lakes, Scout Joe Van Vleck made himself a fire outfit consisting of Fig. 1, a thimble made of a burl, with which to hold Fig. 2, the spindle made of balsam. Fig. 3 is a bow cut from a standing bush; not an elastic bow, such as one uses with which to shoot arrows, but a bow with a permanent bend to it.