ith dogs'
hair and birds' feathers.]

This method of procuring fire has, in fact, been in use from the most
ancient times, and in all parts of the world. It was, as Lafitau
remarks, the very method which was prescribed for rekindling the
vestal fire at Rome, when it was accidentally extinguished. This writer
describes it as in use also among several tribes of the Indians of South
America. Among them, however, it is somewhat more artificially managed
than it appears to be among the New Zealanders, inasmuch as their
practice is first to make a hole in the wood with the tooth of the
acouti, and then to insert in this an instrument resembling a wimble, by
the rapid revolution of which the wood is set on fire.

The Baron Alexander de Humboldt gives a similar account of the manner in
which the operation appears to have been performed among the ancient
Mexicans, who adopted this method of rekindling their fires, on their
general extinction at the end of every cycle of fifty-two years.

In a letter which Humboldt has printed at the conclusion of his work,
from M. Visconti, it is remarked that we find mention made of this
contrivance both in Homer's "Hymn to Mercury," and in the "Argonautics"
of Apollonius Rhodius. The scholiast of the latter gives a description
of the process, which exactly answers to the Mexican delineation.

"On the opposite side of the river," Rutherford proceeds, "which was
about half a mile wide, and not more than four feet deep in any part,
about four hundred of the enemy were encamped, waiting for
reinforcements. Meanwhile messengers were continually passing from the
one party to the other, with messages concerning the war.

"One of them informed us that there was a white man in his party who had
heard of and wished to see me; and that the chiefs, who also wished to
see me, would give me permission to cross the river to meet him, and I
should return unmolested whenever I thought proper. With Aimy's consent,
therefore, I went across the river; but I was not permitted to go armed,
nor yet to take my wife with me. When I arrived on the opposite side,
several of the chiefs saluted me in the usual manner by touching my nose
with theirs; and I afterwards was seated in the midst of them by the
side of the white man, who told me his name was John Mawman, that he was
a native of Port Jackson, and that he had run away from the 'Tees' sloop
of war while she lay at this island. He had since joined the natives,