FIRE. § 1. To obtain a Spark. § 2. Tinder. § 3. To kindle a Spark into a Flame. § 4. Fuel. Although in the teeth of every precaution, fires constantly break out, yet when we want a spark, and do not happen to have our ingenious fire-making contrivances at hand, it is scarcely possible to get one. And further, though it is a matter of no small skill and difficulty to blow a spark into a blaze, yet sparks, of their own accord and in the most unlikely places, too often burst out into conflagrations. § 1. To obtain a spark.-In default of lucifer-matches, the principal means of obtaining fire are by flint and steel, a gun, or a burning-glass. Every traveller should carry about him a light handy steel, an agate, amadou, and a bundle of chips of wood, thinner and shorter than lucifer-matches, with fine points, which he has had dipped in melted sulphur, and also a small spare lump of sulphur in reserve. Cigar fusees are not worth taking in travel, as wet entirely spoils them. The cook should have a regular tinder-box, such as he happens to have been used to, and an abundance of lucifermatches the wax, and not the wooden, lucifers are undoubtedly the best. -- Flint and steel.-Agate is better than flint, it makes a hotter spark. The principal tobacconists sell agates at six pence each, they are well worth buying. Quartz, and other hard stones, will just make a spark. The joints of bam boo sometimes contain enough silex to strike a light with steel. Steels can be made even by a traveller, out of common iron, by "case-hardening" (p. 99), and the link of a chain is of a good shape to be turned into a steel. The North Americans use iron pyrites to strike fire with. Guns. With a flint-and-steel gun, the touch-hole may be stuffed up, and a piece of tinder put among the priming powder: a light can be obtained in that way without letting it off. With a cap gun, a light may be got by putting powder and tinder round the cap outside the nipple, which will, though not with certainty, catch fire on exploding the cap. But the common way with a gun is to put a quarter of a charge of powder in, and above it, quite loosely, a quantity of rag or tinder. On firing the gun straight up in the air, the rag will be shot out lighted, you must then run after it as it falls, and pick it quickly up. With percussion-caps, gunpowder, and tinder, a light may be got on an emergency by scratching and boring with a knife, awl, or nail, at the fulminating composition in the cap till it explodes, but a cap is a somewhat dangerous thing to meddle with, as it often flies with violence, and wounds. Crushing gunpowder with sand, or among hard stones, may make it explode. Burning-glass.-The object-glass (and indeed almost any other one) of a telescope is a burning-glass, and has only to be unscrewed to be used. Blackened tinder ignites in the sun much more easily than light-coloured tinder. I have read somewhere of the crystalline lens of a dead animal's eye having been used, on an emergency, with success as a burning-glass. Fire-sticks.-The sticks that savages use require a long apprenticeship to work with, and it is only particular sticks that will do. § 2. Tinder. If you have a regular tinder-box, the best sort of tinder is the commonest, namely, rags of cotton or linen lighted and smothered before they are burnt to ashes. Amadou, punk, or German tinder, is made from a kind of fungus or mushroom that grows on the trunks of old oaks, ashes, beeches, &c., and many other kinds of fungus will also do. "It should be gathered in August or September, and is prepared by removing the outer bark with a knife, and separating carefully the spongy yellowish mass that lies within it. This is cut into thin slices, and beaten with a mallet, to soften it, till it can easily be pulled asunder between the fingers. It is then boiled in a strong solution of saltpetre (gunpowder in other respects useless, would do to afford the saltpetre), beaten anew, and put a second time into the solution." Touchwood is well known. Dried cattle-dung is very useful as tinder, and there are many substances peculiar to different countries, and used by the natives in them, which a traveller ought to inform himself about. In all cases the presence of saltpetre (which see) makes tinder burn more hotly and more fiercely, and saltpetre exists in such great quantities in the ashes of many plants (as tobacco, dill, maize, sunflower), that these can be used, just as they are, in place of it. Thus, if the ashes of a cigar be well rubbed into a bit of paper, they convert it into touch-paper. Gunpowder, also, of which three-quarters is saltpetre, if rubbed into paper, has the same effect; and injured gunpowder, as remarked before, will do as well for this purpose as that in the very best condition. If it be an object to prepare a store of touch-paper, a strong solution of saltpetre in water should be obtained, and the paper, or rags, or fungus, dipped into it, and hung to dry. This solution may be made by pouring a little water on a charge of gunpowder, or on the ashes above mentioned, which will dissolve the saltpetre out of themand boiling water makes a much stronger solution than cold. §3. To kindle a spark into a flame by blowing is quite an art, which few Europeans have learnt, but in which every savage is proficient. The spark should be received into a kind of loose nest of the most inflammable substances at hand, which ought to be prepared before the tinder is lighted. When by careful blowing or fanning the flame is once started, it should be fed with little bits of sticks or bark, split with a knife, or rubbed between the fingers into fibres, until it has gained enough strength to grapple with thicker ones. There is a proverb, "Small sticks kindle a flame, but large ones put it out." It is the duty of a cook, when the time of encamping draws near, to get down from his horse, and to pick up, as he walks along, a sufficiency of little bits of wood to start a fire, which he should begin to make as soon as ever the caravan stops. The fire ought to be burning, and the kettle standing by its side, by the time that the animals are caught and are ready to be off-packed. Sulphur matches are so very useful to convert a spark into a flame, and they are so easily made, in any quantity, out of split wood, straws, &c., if the traveller will only take the trouble of carrying a small lump of sulphur in his baggage, that they always ought to be at hand. The sulphur is melted in a ladle, bit of crockery, or bit of tin with a dent made in it, and the points of the pieces of wood dipped in the molten mass. In soaking wet weather, the little chips of dry wood, that are so essential to start a fire, are best cut with an axe out of the middle of a tree. In moderately wet weather, they should be looked for under large stones and other shelter. But observe what the natives do in the country in which you are travelling. § 4. Fuel.—There is something of a knack in finding firewood. It should be looked for under bushes; the stump of a tree that is rotted nearly to the ground has often a magnificent root, fit to blaze throughout the night. In want of firewood, the dry manure of cattle, and other animals, as found on the ground, is very generally used throughout the world, and there is nothing whatever that is objectionable in employing it. The Canadians call it by the apt name of Bois de Vache." In North and in South Africa it is frequently used; throughout a large part of Armenia and of Thibet they rely entirely upon it. There is a great convenience in manure fuel, because as it is only in camps that fuel is wanted, so it is precisely at old encamping places that manure is abundantly found. 66 Bones.-Another very remarkable substitute for firewood is bones. Mr. Darwin drew attention to the fact that the bones of an animal, even when freshly killed, make good fuel. In the Falkland Islands, where firewood is scarce, it is not unusual to cook part of the meat of a slaughtered bull with its own bones. When the fire is once started with a few sticks, it burns hotly. The flame, of course, depends on the fat within the bones, and, therefore, the fatter the animal the better fuel should we expect them to be. During the Russian campaign in 1829, the troops suffered so severely from cold, at Adrianople, that the cemeteries were ransacked for bones for fuel (Molkte). Travellers must bear in mind that peat will burn, especially as the countries in which it is found are commonly destitute |