They were stone-boilers, using for this purpose the regular
watape pots, or rather baskets, of woven roots of spruce fir,
but they had also kettles, " made of spruce-bark, which they
hang over the fire, but at such a distance as to receive the heat
without being within reach of the blaze ; a very tedious opera-
tion." 2 In Siberia, among the Ostyaks, the practice has been
observed of using the paunch of the slaughtered beast as a
vessel to cook the blood in over the fire, 3 and the same thing
has been noticed among the Reindeer Koriaks.* Thus the
story told by Herodotus of the Scythians, who, when they had
not a suitable cauldron, used to boil the flesh of the sacrificed
beast in its own paunch, 5 seems to give a glimpse of a state of
things in the centre of Asia, resembling that which has con-
tinued into modern times in the remote North-East. It is thus
not unlikely that the use of stone-boiling, to meet the want
of suitable vessels for direct boiling over the fire, may once
have had a range in Asia far beyond the Kamchatkan
promontory. 6

It may be that the more convenient boiling in vessels set
over the fire was generally preceded in the world by the clumsier

1 E. Ysbrants Ides, ' Reue naar China ; ' Amsterdam, 1710, p. 27.
2 Mackenzie, p. 207.
J Erman (E. Tr.), vol. ii. pp. 456, 467.
4 Kracheninnikow, p. 142.
6 Herod., iv. 61.
6 The frequent use of wicker baskets for holding liquids, in Africa, may have a
bearing on the history of stone-boiling. See mention of hot stones for melting or
boiling fat, in Bleek, 'lleynard in Africa,' pp. 8-10,



270 FIRE, COOKING, AND VESSELS.
