This failure made Billy determine again to try his hand at making fire, which we had no time for when building our little hut. He picked up a straight twig, that seemed to promise well for his purpose, and sharpening his flint axe, he peeled the twig and cut it so as to make a stick about a foot long, one end of which he brought to a point. But, finding the wood too soft for the use to which he designed it, he went prowling about to discover a tree hard enough, testing them with his axe, and after a long search, lighted upon a tree that was very hard, and whose sap was of a blood-red colour.[1] Having cut a stick of this, he sharpened one end to a point, and then took two chunks of wood, one of a soft kind, the other of the new-discovered tree, which we called redwood, and in each of these chunks he made a little hollow, one in the soft wood for the sharp end of the stick, the other for the blunt. Then, fitting the stick into these hollows, he gave me all three pieces of wood to hold, and while I held them tightly clamped together, he began to twirl the stick between his hands as fast as he could, as he had seen the savages do, though often they used a bowstring. He continued this for a good while, until his hands, hard as they were, grew sore and his face was running with sweat; but whether that the wood was damp, or that Billy was not dexterous enough, I know not, only that there was never a sign of smouldering, though the wood was hot when we felt it. Billy insisted that I should take a turn, which I did, and twirled the stick even faster, I believe, than he did, though not so long; but it was all no good, and at last we threw the wood from us, concluding that if we were to obtain fire, it must be in some other way. I do not mean that we never tried the native way again: we were not so easily discouraged; we tried more than once in the intervals of doing other things, and I think that with perseverance we might have succeeded at last, only it was not necessary, as will be seen hereafter. [Sidenote: Building Materials] This failure, though it annoyed us at the time, was of use to us, inasmuch as it set us on noticing [1] This appears to have been what botanists call _Rhizophora mucronata_.--H.S.