“They make fire by turning a hard stick, of which the socket end is dipped in train oil, very rapidly around by means of a sealskin thong with handles. This stick is fixed at one end into a head set with bone, and the other end is pressed down into a cavity on the lower piece of wood (fig. 25). Therefore there must be two persons in order to make a fire. One turns the drill with the cord, while the other presses it down on the hearth; both support the block with their feet. As soon as the dust begins to burn they fan it with the hand. When it is ignited, they take it and put it into dried moss (_sphagnum_), blow it, and soon get a blaze. In this way they make a fire in an incredibly short time.”[34] In the preliminary report, Mr. Holm gives the time at almost less than half a minute. It was made by the Eskimo, Illinguaki, and his wife, who, on being presented with a box of matches, gave up their drill, saying that they had no farther use for it. In the same report Mr. Holm gives an interesting note. He says: This fire apparatus is certainly better developed than that which has been described and drawn by Nordenskiöld from the Chukchis (Voy. of the _Vega_, II, p. 126). The principle is the same as the Greenlander’s drill, which they employ for making holes in wood and bone, and which is furnished with a bow and mouth-piece.[35] (fig. 26.) [Illustration: Fig. 26. Boring Set. (Angmagsalik Eskimo, E. Greenland. G. Holm’s Ethnologisk of Angmagsalikerne.)] The central holes of this hearth are worthy of note, occurring in the farthest eastern locality of the Eskimo, and in Labrador. _Western Greenland._—The material in the Museum from western Greenland is very scanty. The southern coast has been settled for so long a time that the Eskimo and many of their arts have almost become extinct. No view of fire-making in Greenland would be complete without Davis’s quaint description of it, made three hundred years ago, but it was the upper end of the spindle that was wet in Trane. A Greenlander “begaune to kindle a fire in this manner: He tooke a piece of a boord wherein was a hole half thorow; into that hole he puts the end of a round sticke like unto a bedstaffe, wetting the end thereof in Trane, and in a fashion of a turner with a piece of lether, by his violent motion doeth very speedily produce fire.”[36] Eskimo graves and village sites yield evidence also that the fire-making tools were not different from those at present used higher north along the coast, and on the east coast. Dr. Bessels, speaking of Itah Eskimo of Foulke Fiord in Smith Sound, says: “The catkins of the arctic willow are used as tinder to catch the sparks produced by grinding two pieces of stone. Also the widely diffused ‘fire-drill’ is found here; the spindle is held between a piece of bone and a fragment of semi-decayed wood, and is set in motion by the well-known bow, and is turned until the wood begins to ignite.”[37]