For "kindling," a number of sticks
partly split or splintered with your knife are useful.
Do you know what "punk" is?
Well, "punk," or "tinder," is what _a_ good many backwoodsmen
carry about with them for lighting their fires.
It can be a small bit of cotton waste soaked in petrol or spirits, or
very dry, baked fungus, or bark fibre, or anything that will catch
fire from the slightest spark.
Then, if you have no matches, you can strike a spark with a flint and
steel (the back of your knife on a stone will do it), and so set light
to your punk.
Or you can do it with a magnifying glass if there is a good sun
shining, by making the sunlight pass through the glass on to a small
amount of punk, and in a few seconds it will set it smouldering; and
you must then gently blow it up into a glow, and finally into a flame,
with which you can light the "kindling."
Indians and savages, who have neither matches nor burning-glasses, get
fire by rubbing wood together.
The easiest way is by putting a slat of dry wood on the ground and
boring a hole through it with a stick of dry wood, twirling the stick
by means of a bow string.
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