ounts of Indian methods,
but, unfortunately, I have never yet seen a book account that was
accurate enough to guide anyone successfully in the art of
fire-making. All omit one or other of the absolute essentials, or
dwell on some triviality. The impression they leave on those who know
is that the writers did not.

The surest and easiest method of making a friction fire is by use of
the bow-drill. Two sticks, two tools, and some tinder are needed.

The two sticks are the drill and the fire-board, or fire-block. The
books generally tell us that these must be of different kinds of wood.
This is a mistake. I have uniformly gotten the best results with two
pieces of the same kind--all the better, indeed, if they are parts of
the same stick.

What Kind of Wood

This is a very important question, as woods that are too hard, too
soft, too wet, too oily, too gummy, or too resinous will not produce
fire. The wood should be soft enough to wear away, else it produces no
punk, and hard enough to wear slowly, or the heat is not enough to
light the punk, and, of course, it should be highly inflammable. Those
that I have had the best luck with are balsam fir, cottonwood roots,
tamarack, European larch, red cedar, white cedar, Oregon cedar,
basswood, cypress, and sometimes second-growth white pine. It should
always be a dry, sound stick, brash, but not in the least punky.

In each part of the country there seems to be a kind of wood well
suited for fire-making. The Eastern Indians used cedar; the Northern
Indians, cedar or balsam fir; the plains Indians used cottonwood or
sage-brush roots.

Perhaps the most reliable of all is dry and seasoned balsam fir;
either the species in the North woods or in the Rockies will do. It
gives a fine big spark or coal in about seven seconds.

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When in the grinding the dust that runs out of the notch is coarse and
brown, it means that the wood is too soft; when it is very fine and
scanty it means that the wood is too hard.

[Illustration: The rubbing-sticks for fire-making.]

1. The simplest kind of bow; a bent stick with a stout leather thong
fastened at each end. It is about 27 inches long and 5/8 inch thick.

2. A more elaborate bow with a hole at each end for the thong. At the
handle end it goes through a disc of wood. This is to tighten the
thong by pressure of the hand against the disc while using.

3. Simplest kind of drill-socket; a pine or hemlock knot with a
shallow h