The canoes of the Fuegians are rudely constructed of bark sewed together with prepared sinews. In the bottom a hearth of clay is made, on which they habitually keep a fire alight. They too have learned the value of iron pyrites, and with its help readily obtain the spark required for igniting their prepared tinder of dried moss or fungus. Captain Weddell states that he produced the tinder-box in presence of a party of Fuegians, in order to ascertain how fire is obtained by them, and presently he discovered that his steel had been purloined. This, however, he recovered, and after sending the culprit to his canoe with threats of punishment, he learned that they procure fire by rubbing iron pyrites and a flinty stone together, catching the sparks in a dry substance resembling moss.[58] The ancient use of pyrites for fire-making is supposed to be embodied in its etymology (πῦρ). Mr. John Evans has pointed out that the lower beds of the same English chalk in which the flint abounds are prolific of pyrites; and he makes the suggestion that the use of a nodule of pyrites for a hammer-stone in the process of manufacturing flint implements, may have led to the discovery of this method of producing fire. But if so, it is a discovery of remote antiquity, for such nodules have been found both in French and Belgian caves, associated with the bones of fossil mammals and worked flints of the palæolithic era. They also occur in the Swiss lake-dwellings, as at Robenhausen, along with neolithic implements. But pyrites is not always available; and Esquimaux, Fuegians, and Australians practise also the more usual, and probably the more ancient, method of producing fire by friction. The process among the Tahitians and South Sea islanders is pursued in the laboriously artless fashion of rubbing one piece of wood against another; though it is said that, with perfectly dry wood, they obtain fire in this way in two or three minutes. Australian fire-making is effected in nearly the same way; but the American Indians have improved on the process by the use of the bow and drill. Among the Iroquois and other tribes, the drill was provided with a stone whorl, or fly-wheel, to give it momentum; and when rapidly revolved by means of a bow and string, with the point resting on a piece of dry wood, surrounded with moss or punk, sparks are produced in a few seconds, and the tinder is ignited. The art of fire-making is thus found in use among savage nations, even in the most degraded state: as among the Fuegians, whose wretched condition and repulsive appearance and habits have led travellers to describe them as scarcely human. They are indeed in every way inferior to the Esquimaux. Yet their implements and weapons display remarkable ingenuity and skill; and the origin of the name of their desolate region is traced to the numerous fires seen by the first Spanish discoverers who navigated its coasts.