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As an assistant instructor in anthropology at Harvard University, he had now and then produced fire for his class of expectant students by using the Peruvian fire-drill; but even this simple expedient required a head-strap and a jade bearing, a well-formed spindle and a bow. Stern had none of these things, neither could he fashion them without tools.
Then he crawled into the cave, and his assistant followed him. Soon a rustling noise was heard inside, a grating like that of a drill followed, and everybody outside became silent. The tapop was starting the council-fire, and he used for the purpose that venerable implement of primitive times, the fire-drill.
The word means "a churning-stick," and it appears also, with a prefixed preposition, in the name of the fire-drill, pramantha. Now Kuhn has proved that this name, pramantha, is etymologically identical with Prometheus, the name of the beneficent Titan, who stole fire from heaven and bestowed it upon mankind as the richest of boons.
As to the fire-drill see The Magic Art and the Evolution of Kings, ii. 207 sqq. See above, pp. 154, 156, 157, 159 sq. Census of India, 1911, vol. xiv. Punjab, Part i. So in the north-east of Scotland "those who were born with their feet first possessed great power to heal all kinds of sprains, lumbago, and rheumatism, either by rubbing the affected part, or by trampling on it.
At the Temple of the Soul of the God, where the sacred fire-drill used to be delivered each year with solemn rites to the great Kokuzo of Kitzuki, there are curious things to be seen a colossal grain of rice, more than an inch long, preserved from that period of the Kamiyo when the rice grew tall as the tallest tree and bore grains worthy of the gods; and a cauldron of iron in which the peasants say that the first Kokuzo came down from heaven; and a cyclopean toro formed of rocks so huge that one cannot imagine how they were ever balanced upon each other; and the Musical Stones of Oba, which chime like bells when smitten.
But then the fire-drill began to emit a tiny wisp of smoke. Thorn worked furiously. Then a tiny flickering flame appeared, which he nursed with a desperate solicitude. Then a larger flame. Then a roaring blaze! It could not be missed! A fire within the dome could not fail to be noted and examined instantly! A searchlight beam fell upon them, illuminating him in a pitiless glare.
These things I learn: Each year the temple receives a new fire-drill; but the fire-drill is never made in Kitzuki, but in Kumano, where the traditional regulations as to the manner of making it have been preserved from the time of the gods.
Ericson cast a glance over the whole scene, and had to acknowledge that the household had turned out with almost the promptitude of a fire-drill on the ocean.
The fact that the oilburning, soapstone lamps of the Eskimo were the only means of producing artificial light in aboriginal America, except by ordinary fires, is another tribute to the ingenuity of these northerners. So, too, is the fire-drill by which they alone devised a means of increasing the speed with which one stick could be twirled against another to produce fire.
Choose a piece of sapling about eighteen or twenty inches long which curves evenly; cut a notch around it at each end and at the notched places attach a string of rawhide of the kind used as shoe-strings in hunting-shoes. It must not be taut as for archery. Make these of spruce. The twirling-stick, spindle, or fire-drill should be a little over half an inch in diameter and sixteen inches long.
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