Corresponding to this cowrie currency of Asia and Africa is the American Ioqua, or _Dentalium_, a shell found chiefly at the entrance of the Strait of De Fuca, and employed both for ornament and money. The Chinooks and other Indians of the Northern Pacific coast wear long strings of ioqua shells as necklaces and fringes to their robes. These have a value assigned to them, increasing in proportion to their size, which varies from about an inch and a half to upwards of two inches in length. Mr. Paul Kane thus wrote to me: “A great trade is carried on among all the tribes in the neighbourhood of Vancouver’s Island, through the medium of these shells. Forty shells of the standard size, extending a fathom’s length, are equal in value to a beaver’s skin; but if shells can be found so far in excess of the ordinary standard that thirty-nine are long enough to make the fathom, it is worth two beavers’ skins, and so on, increasing in value one beaver skin for every shell less than the first number.” But as the New World has thus its disclosures and illustrations of native arts and usages full of interest to the student of primeval man, so also the first glimpse of a western hemisphere revealed its aborigines already familiar with that distinctive evidence of reason, the art of fire-making, earliest of all the practical sciences, and the indispensable precursor of every higher art of civilisation. ----- [44] _Ancient Stone Implements of Great Britain_, Fig. 405, p. 460. [45] For a detailed discussion of this subject in its general bearings, _vide_ “_Right-handedness_,” _Canadian Journal, N.S._, vol. xiii. p. 193. [46] _Journ. Ethnol. Soc., N. S._, vol. ii. p. 419. [47] _Athenæum_, April 5, 1873. [48] _Alaska and its Resources_, p. 237. [49] _Découverte d’un Squellette humain de l’époque Paléolithique dans les cavernes des Baoussé Roussé_, par Emile Rivière, p. 31. [50] _Reliquiæ Aquitanicæ._ VII. Account of the human bones found in the cave of Cro-Magnon in Dordogne, by Dr. Pruner-Bey. [51] _Reliquiæ Aquitanicæ._ M. Louis Lartet, p. 70. [52] For a more detailed account, _vide_ _Proc. Soc. Antiq. Scot._, vol. vi. p. 376. [53] Lord Kingsborough’s _Mexican Antiquities_, vol. i. plate 68. [54] _Transactions_, _American Ethnological Society_, vol. i. pp. 355-365. [55] _Inquiry into the Origin of the Antiquities of America_, p. 162. [56] _Antiquities of the Southern Indians_, p. 200. CHAPTER V. FIRE. THE FIRE-USING ANIMAL—ESQUIMAUX USE OF FIRE—FUEGIAN FIRE-MAKING —MODES OF PRODUCING FIRE—AUSTRALIAN FIRE-MYTH—MEN OF THE MAMMOTH AGE—HEARTHS OF THE CAVE-MEN—PACIFIC ROOT-WORD FOR FIRE —GREAT CYCLE OF THE AZTECS—REKINDLING THE SACRED FIRE— PERUVIAN SUN-WORSHIPPERS—SACRIFICE OF THE WHITE DOG—SACRED FIRES OF THE MOUND-BUILDERS—INDIAN FIRE-MAKING—SANCTITY OF FIRE—TIERRA DEL FUEGO.