Bows and Arrows.

185

filled by those who live on the produce of the chase. The first rude implements of man originally served all purposes. The hunter seized his missiles to repel an enemy; and the stone axe of the savage, which felled the tree, also split the skull of an opponent in the fray. Hence, the oldest, the truest, and the noblest implement of war is the sword, which can never have been used indifferently for war and handicraft. We may here observe that, so far as we yet know, the invention of swords in Europe dates only from the bronze age, whereas we shall presently find a case in another part of the world in which there were swords elsewhere, even in the stone age.

Bows and arrows necessarily disappear entirely wherever the chase is no longer a means of livelihood, or where hunting is impossible. As we pass in an easterly, northerly, or southeasterly direction from New Guinea, hunting ceases, for, with the exception of bats, tame pigs, dogs, and rats, all the islands are destitute of mammals. Hence the interest excited some years ago by the discovery by Haast of a wild mammal, although an aquatic one, namely, an otter, on the southern island of New Zealand. That there should be no mammalia on these islands is simply accounted for by their origin; for coral islands arise only where polyps build up wall-like reefs of their calcareous branches on the shallow surfaces of submerged continents. The only other islands are volcanic structures, originally formed below the sea, and then gradually upheaved above the surface by eruptions. These islands, New Zealand included, have never, at least since the tertiary period, been connected with any continent, so that no mammals incapable of flying or swimming were able to reach them. Hence it is that the disappearance of bows and arrows is due to their geological origin.

That this is the true and ultimate reason is substantiated in another locality. In the West Indies we have before us, not small and narrow coral structures, but large areas, such as Cuba, Haiti, Jamaica, and Porto Rico. But, with the exception of Cuba, even these spacious islands were destitute of any large mammals; for, at the time of the Spaniards' arrival, there were, besides bats, only

6 ie, the sword of the bronze age, which was intended for striking only.

five species of small rodents, of which the largest was but slightly bigger than a rat. These islands, the remains of larger tracts of country, must have lost their connection with the nearest continent, which is South America, in the early part of the tertiary period. North America was at that time far more distant; for the peninsula of Florida is a recent and still incomplete creation of the coral animal. As hunting was impossible on these islands, the inhabitants did not use bows and arrows, though all the tribes of the adjacent continent carry these weapons. For the sake of accuracy it must be added that, on the Antilles, on the eastern shore of Haiti, the eastern half of Porto Rico, and in the Windward Islands, there were people who wielded these weapons with dexterity. But these were new-comers, the Caribs, who, being better sailors than any other American tribes, invaded the peaceful inhabitants of the Antilles in their own abode, slew the men, and carried off the women as captives, from which circumstances there arose among them separate languages for men and women, unless we accept the other explanation, that, as among the Kaffirs, husband and wife speak different languages, because the wife may suffer no word to pass her lips which occurs in the name of any man allied to her by marriage. As these Caribs came from the continent, where they lived on the produce of the chase, we can easily understand that when they spread to the Antilles they had not completely laid aside the bow and arrow.

The blow pipe is another characteristic weapon for shooting, which is used by the Malay tribes in Borneo, and also on the continent of Asia by the Malayo-Chinese Laoti on the Mekong, as well as by the Orang-kubits 7 and the Semangs of the peninsula of Malacca. The Papuans of New Guinea may also have borrowed it from the Malays. But the blow pipe was not invented in South-eastern Asia only, for we find it also in the hands of the Indians on the Amazon, whose aim is certain at a distance of 250 feet. 10 The blow pipe has the same advantage over other weapons as a breechloader has, and a practised hand can despatch

7 Peschel, Zeitalter der Entdeckungen.

8 Mouat, Travels in Indo-China, Cambodia, and Laos. 1864. F. Jagor, Singapore, Malacca, Java. Berlin, 1866.

9 Waitz (Gerland) Anthropologie, vol. vi. p. 599. 10 Martius, Ethnographie.

several projectiles in the space of a minute. The small slender darts escape the notice of the victim still more easily than the arrow, and the marksman may continue to fire his missiles from his concealment until the object is struck. As the projectile force is derived from the muscles of the thorax, the strength of the percussion is very slight. To produce a deadly effect it is therefore requisite for the dart to be poisoned. Hence the poison itself is the weapon and the missile merely the vehicle. On the Malay islands this purpose is served by the Ipo, or the juice of the upas tree (Antiaris toxicaria), which produces very malignant but rarely mortal wounds. At least Dr. Mohnike maintains that a considerable number of arrows are required to produce tetanic rigidity in an old orang-outang.1 . On the other hand Spenser St. John asserts that in a conflict in Borneo with the Kanowit Dyaks, in 1859, the English lost thirty of their men by small and scarcely perceptible wounds made by the poisoned darts; 12 and Lieutenant Crespigny saw a native of Borneo die in two hours after being wounded in this way in the calf of the leg and in the shoulder.13 Similar effects were produced by a poisonous unguent used by the warlike and bloodthirsty inhabitants of the shores of the Caribbean Sea. According to the accounts of the old Spanish navigators, the death of the wounded took place somewhat tardily, amid delirium and agonies of suffering, frequently only after the lapse of twentyfour hours. They state that the poison was made of the juice of the manchineel tree (Hippomane mancinella), mixed with snakes' poison; 14 but their assertions are all very obscure and questionable.

We are better informed as to the most terrible of all poisons. namely, the urari, curaré, or woorali, of the Indians of the river Amazon 15 and of Guyana. Neither Lacondamine nor Spix and

11 Ausland, vol. xlv. 1872.

12 Far East, vol i. p. 46.

13 Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society, vol. xvi. 1872. 14 Oviedo, Historia general y natural de las Indias, lib. xxvii. cap. 3. 15 This dreaded poison is prepared on the river Amazon by the tribes living near the sources of its northern affluent, between Rio Negro and Japura (Bates, The Naturalist on the Amazon, vol. ii. p. 238. London, 1863). The Indians on the Napo river procure the urari from the Tecunas; and the return voyage of the boats occupies no less than three months. In their own country the poison is weighed against silver (James Orton, The Andes and the Amazon. 1870.)

Martius witnessed the preparation of this arrow poison. Alexander von Humboldt was the first to penetrate into a manufactory of this poison on the Orinoco, and bring samples of curaré back to Europe. But it was the younger Schomburgh at Pirará who first assisted at the preparation of the unguent. 16 The urari, as he calls it, was made of various vegetable substances, but the actual poison is the bark and alburnum of the Strychnos toxifera. In small warm-blooded animals the smallest wound is followed by instant death, and even larger animals stagger and collapse. Humboldt even declares that the earth-eating Otomaks kill their antagonists by the pressure of their poisoned thumb nails.17 Samples of urari, or curaré, were brought to Paris about ten years ago, and were there employed in experiments by the celebrated physiologist, Claude Bernard.18 It then became apparent that the poison operates only if it is able to mingle with the blood. The cessation of nervous power in muscular movements then commences, but ultimately the action of lungs and heart is stopped, and death results quite painlessly from the greatest conceivable degree of lassitude, like the stopping of a pendulum when the clockwork has run down. When the poison is fresh even animals as large as the tapir collapse after a few steps.

The practice of poisoning missiles is also common in Africa, According to the records of the Portuguese discoverers, the Jolofers in Guinea, as well as the negroes of Rio Grande, formerly poisoned their arrows. 19 The Mandingo negroes did the same in the days of Mungo Park,20 and, according to Benjamin Anderson, it is even now done by the Mandingoes at Musardo. On the White Nile the Moro negroes, who live near 5° north latitude,22 as well as the Bari negroes, are said to anoint their arrows with the poison of snakes or plants.23 Du Chaillu says that the Fan

16 Richard Schomburgh, Reisen in Guayana. 1847.

17 Ansichten der Natur.

18 Revue des Deux Mondes. 1864.

19 Peschel, Zeitalter der Entdeckungen.

21

20 Mungo Park, Reisen im innern von Afrika. Berlin, 1799.

negroes in South Africa do the same. 24 Ladislaus Magyar 25 relates that the southern neighbours of the Kimbunda in Bihé, poison the points of their spears. Livingstone speaks of kombi, a poison made from a species of Strophanthus by the people living on the Shiré, and of another arrow poison used on Lake Nyassa; he also states that the Bushmen of Kalahari procure a poison for their missiles from the entrails of a small caterpillar named Nga. 26 Theophilus Hahn, on the other hand, asserts that the Bushmen obtain the poison for their arrows used for hunting from the bulbs of Hamanthus toxicarius; but for their weapons of war from the poison glands of snakes and the juice of a kind of spurge (Euphorbia candelabrum).27 Kolbe saw Hottentots anoint their arrows with the poison of the hooded snake.28 Pliny speaks of the Arabian pirates in troglodyte Africa, that is to say, on the southern shores of the Red Sea, as poisoners of arrows. Another Arabic race, the Bhortans of the Himalayas, completes the list. 29

The nations enumerated are all within the tropical, or at least within the subtropical, zone. The whole of North America is free from this evil practice, which, according to Moritz Wagner, has its most northerly limit in the New World at the Isthmus of Darien, and at Choco on the Atrato.30 The single exception yet known to us is the case of the Ceres, or Seris, of the Bay of California, who make use of these hateful weapons. The use of the blow pipe in South America has been already noticed; we will now only add, on the authority of Dobrizhoffer, that the Chiquitos in Paraguay anointed their darts with a poison so fatal that, if the least blood was shed, the smallest injury produced death in the course of a few hours.

31

But it would be a mistake to suppose that this means of inflict

24 Explorations and Adventures in Equatorial Africa. 1861.

25 Reisen.

26 Livingstone, Zambesi, p. 466. A representation of this larva is given in Wood's Natural History of Man.

27 Th. Hahn in the Globus. 1870. G. Fritsch, Eingeborne Südafrika's. 28 Vollständ, Beschreibung des Vorgebirges der guten Hoffnung. 1719.

29 H. von Schlagintweit, Indien und Hochasien.

30 Naturwissenschaftliche Reisen. 1869.

31 Waitz, Anthropologie der Naturvölker.