Flints.--If we may rely on a well-known passage in Virgil, concerning
AEneas and his comrades, fire was sometimes made in ancient days by
striking together two flints, but I confess myself wholly unable to light
tinder with flints alone, and I am equally at a loss to understand what
were the "dry leaves" that they are said in the same passage to have used
for tinder. Neither can I obtain fire except with a flint and steel, or,
at least, hardened iron; a flint and ordinary iron will not give an
available spark. Flints may be replaced by any siliceous stone, as agate,
rock-crystal, or quartz. Agate is preferred to flint, for it gives a
hotter spark: it is sold by tobacconists. A partly siliceous stone, such
as granite, will answer in default of one that is wholly siliceous. I
have been surprised at finding that crockery and porcelain of all kinds
will make a spark, and sometimes a very good one. There are cases where a
broken teacup might be the salvation of many lives in a shipwrecked
party. On coral-reefs, and other coasts destitute of flinty stones,
search should be made for drift-wood and drifted sea-weed. In the roots
of these, the pebbles of other shores are not unfrequently entangled, and
flint may be found among them. The joints of bamboos occasionally contain
enough silex to give a spark.
Steels.--The possession of a really good steel is a matter of great
comfort in rough travel, for, as I have just said, common iron is
incompetent to afford a useful spark, and hardened iron or soft steel is
barely sufficient to do so.
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