and by using our
knives got some dry chips from the inside of a log. When all was ready
we gathered close around, and I got out the one match. I was about to
strike it when the younger of the men said:

"Say, Seton, you are not a smoker; Jack is. Hadn't you better give him
that match?"

There was sense in this. I have never in my life smoked. Jack was an
old stager and an adept with matches. I handed it to him.
"Rrrp-fizz"--and in a minute we had a fire.

With the help of the firelight we now found plenty of dead wood; we
made three blazing fires side by side, and after an hour we removed
the centre one, then raked away all the hot ashes, and all lay down
together on the warm ground. When the morning came the rain ceased. We
stretched our stiffened limbs and made for camp. Yes, there it was in
plain view two miles away across a fearful canyon. Three steps more on
that gloomy night and we should have been over the edge of that canyon
and dashed to the bottom.

How to Make Fire by Rubbing Sticks

"How do the Indians make a fire without matches?" asked a boy who
loved to "play Indian." Most of us have heard the answer to this. "The
Indians use a flint and steel, as our own fathers and mothers did one
hundred years ago, and before they had flint and steel they used
rubbing-sticks." We have all read about bringing fire out of two
sticks by rubbing them together. I tried it once for an hour, and I
know now I never would have got it in a thousand years as I was doing
it. Others have had the same experience; consequently, most persons
look upon this as a sort of fairy tale, or, if they believe it to be
true, they think it so difficult as to be worth no second thought. All
scouts, I find, are surprised and greatly interested to learn that not
only is it possible, it is easy, to make a friction {71} fire, if you
know how; and hopeless, if you don't. I have taught many boys and men
(including some Indians) to do it, and some have grown so expert that
they make it nearly as quickly as with an old-fashioned sulphur match.
When I first learned from Walter Hough, who learned from the Indians,
it took me from five to ten minutes to get a blazing fire--not half an
hour, as some books have it. But later I got it down to a minute, then
to thirty-one seconds from the time of taking up the rubbing-sticks to
having a fine blaze, the time in getting the first spark being about
six seconds.

My early efforts were inspired by book acc