Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III THE FIRST GAINS FROM KINDLED FLAME INCALCULABLE were the gains that began to flow in upon the first fire-maker, his victory won, its spoils assured. Beneath his tread the globe expanded itself with invitation, for now no longer chained by New Horizons for the the sunbeam, he added all the frozen Fire-mater. North to his hunting-ground. The Eskimos, according to Professor Dawkins, are the lineal descendants of the cavemen. They are the only American aborigines who have invented a lamp; that simple device has enabled them to conquer and hold an outpost twenty degrees nearer the pole than any other human settlement (Fig. 6). Whether the first explorers had caves to fall back upon or not, fire was indispensable to them. A burning brand cleared their paths through forests otherwise impenetrable. When they singled out a tree for their rude carpentry, it was no longer cut down by flints so soon dulled and broken in the process. Fire cunningly applied, to be as cunningly quenched with wet mud, had a sharper and quicker tooth iSH'?!4-? Fig. 6. Eskimo lamp from Mackenzie River. U. S. National Museum. DAY LENGTHENED 25 than stone. The tree felled, its trunk was softened and shaped, again by fire, into a canoe for voyages too daring for any raft. Yet worthier service lay in lifting the dreary pall of night. Until the savage could command fire the clouded evening sky left him as if sightless for toil, for sport, for escape from ravening beasts and sudden tempests. If his feet found a beaten path, it was easy to stray from it in darkness, perchance to pay the penalty with his life. His lowly hearth, heaped with crackling boughs, cheered even more with its light than with its warmth. It drew to its rays the industries of flint and needle; its fitful be...