bark sewn together, is sufficient for the Ostiaks of Siberia. 43 Charlevoix, the Jesuit, describes the shelter of many hunting tribes in Canada as being but little superior.44 In the extreme north of the Old and New World, beyond the limit of trees, or where the stems of the trees are not of the requisite thickness, and also on the treeless steppes, bark walls are replaced by hides of animals. Thus the leathern tent of Lapland 45 is used throughout Siberia and as far as the prairies of the United States to the 35th degree of latitude.46 It disappears in Equatorial and Southern America only to reappear among the Patagonians, who cover a framework of stakes with the hides of the Guanaco sewn together.47 The felt tent, an invention of the Ural-Altaic nations, is doubtless of high antiquity. From Central Asia it has spread in the direction of the monsoon, and within the zone of the trade winds, over the Sahara, and to the wooded districts of Central Africa, but it is transformed on the way into an airy tent of a woven fabric, and rendered architectural in the Arabian style with its domes and slender shafts, the latter of which are represented by the tent-poles. In the lofty forests of tropical America the itinerant hunting tribes are sheltered from the rain by a sloping roof of the oarshaped leaves of palms and other trees, laid like scales one above the other. When nations finally become stationary they are at first satisfied with a quadrangular or circular framework of poles, bound together with basket-work or strips of bark. A pointed or dome-shaped roof covered with leaves, tufts of grass, or bundles of rushes, completes the simplest form of hut. Whole tribes frequently live in a single cloister-like structure, within which a cell is allotted to each family. Dumont d'Urville describes two such buildings of the Arfaki of New Guinea, which together accommodated 150 people, and on the Utanete river in the same region 43 Pallas, Voyages. Paris, 1793. 44 Nouvelle France. 45 See the representation of Lapp summer tents given by J. A. Frijs in the Globus. 1873. 46 Möllhausen, vom Mississipi nach der Südsee. 47 Musters, Journal of the Anthropological Institute, vol. i. p. 197. Primitive Dwellings. 181 there are similar structures.48 At Borneo, Spenser St. John saw a Dyak building 534 feet in length.49 Similar rows of cells are also customary among the Ostiaks,50 but the most extensive of these wooden structures are inhabited by the Haidahs on Queen Charlotte's Island in North America, and by the Colquiths on Vancouver's Island, for they accommodate from two to three hundred people, and in Nootka Sound even eight hundred. The bark huts of the Indians in the east of the present United States, as described by Charlevoix, are not so thickly populated, but yet contain several families.52 Even in South America such common dwellings occur. Wallace found them on the Uaupés (Rio Negro) among the tribe of the same name, as far as latitude 75° and longitude 1150,53 In Australia and the South Seas plastic earth is never used to thicken wicker walls. Building with sun-dried bricks or adobes is peculiar to the dry highlands and lowlands of New Mexico, Mexico, and Central America, while Central Africa again has its earthen huts, the walls of which are formed of stamped clay, on which a straw roof is placed. Stone architecture at first attempted only the humblest undertakings, for the difficulty of erecting perpendicular walls with mere fragments of stone was insuperable. In Central America, as in Mesopotamia, ancient temple structures consisted of pyramids in steps. The earliest attempts at such works of art may have resembled the simple terraces, or Morai, of the Polynesian Islands, but they attained their fullest development in the smooth Pyramids of Egypt. It was in dry, treeless regions that the inhabitants were first compelled to build walls, by the necessity of finding a substitute to replace the beams which could not be procured. Architecture is therefore nearly four thousand years older in Egypt than in India, where the earliest works of the kind were the rock temples, in which, however, the roofs were supported by trunks of iron-wood (Sideroxylon), while according to Fergusson's researches, self-supporting stone structures were 48 Otto Finsch, New Guinea. 49 Life in the far East. 50 Pallas, Voyages. Paris, 1793. 53 Martius, Ethnographie. only introduced under King Asoka, in the middle of the third century before Christ. To pierce the walls for light and air, as well as afford access to the inhabitants themselves, was a severe problem to human ingenuity. This was at last done by placing the stones so as to project one beyond the other, like inverted steps, until the highest stones approached each other so nearly that the aperture could be bridged over by a broad stone laid transversely on the top. The temple gates, which are wider at the sill than at the top, show that the art among the Egyptians and Greeks must for a time have remained stationary at this point, for even when, at a later period, the art of stone-masonry had so far advanced that it was possible to construct rectangular entrances, the primitive form was retained either from old affection or artistic taste. In ancient Babylon spurious vaults converging obliquely, and false arches, were made in like manner, namely, by projecting layers of bricks.54 These timid attempts serve to make us recognize the full merit of the invention of the stone self-supporting arch. In the Old World the Assyrians were probably the first to adopt this expedient, and the Romans the first to advance from the construction of door and window arches to that of vaults and domes. To justify this digression into the history of art, we need only state that these facts are of importance in estimating the intellectual rank of American peoples. On the Puna, the plateaux of the Cordilleras, we find stone huts and stone tombs 55 in the district of Inca-Peruvian civilization. Humboldt 56 made sketches of arched vaults in the Palace of the Ataohuallpa, at Caxamarca, while further to the south, vaulted buildings and round arches at Tiahuanaco, as well as in the Temple of the Sun at Cuzco, have also been described by Desjardins and J. J. von Tschudi. 57 No small credit is due to the Eskimo for the tunnel-like stone 54 Rawlinson, Monarchies of the Ancient World, vol. i. p. 86. 55 Clement Markham, Proceedings of the Royal Geogr. Society, vol. xv. 1871. 56 Alexander von Humboldt, Eine wissenschaftliche Biographie, ed. Karl Bruhns. 1872. 57 F. von Hellwald im Ausland, No. 41. 1871. The Distribution of Weapons. 183 vaulting of the entrances to their huts, and of the huts themselves. 58 The idea suggested itself more readily to them than to the denizens of more temperate zones, for they had long been in the habit of piling up snow grottoes, and of constructing domed huts with blocks of snow. 59 IV.-WEAPONS. IF we follow the course of any of the old Spanish, Dutch, or English discoverers who preceded Captain Cook on a voyage across the South Seas, we are greatly puzzled if we attempt to assign the names accepted in modern geography to any of the islands which they saw. Even if the calculations of latitude are correct within half a degree, the error of the longitude given may on the other hand increase twentyfold, so that we must search about among countless islands which all look alike, for they are either mere coral reefs, or are recent or ancient volcanoes. Our task would thus be hopeless were we not able to ascertain the longitude by two indications. When the discoverer sailing westwards describes nations with crowns of hair, this must be close to the 18oth meridian of Greenwich, for the twin islands, Hoorne and Alofa, are the most easterly points reached by the Papuans, to whom this character exclusively belongs. Again, when we read that the traveller was greeted by the natives on land or water with volleys of arrows, we may conclude that this was in the neighbourhood of New Guinea. The Polynesian races of the South Seas have never opposed Europeans by means of bows and arrows, and, strange as it may sound, the reason of their not doing so is purely geological. If any one attempted to explain this circumstance by stating that the Polynesians, like other Malay nations, were unacquainted with. these missiles, because the bow was not invented when they abandoned Southern Asia for their homes in the Pacific, we should tell him that the bow and arrow is a boy's plaything on Nukufetaw, in the Ellice group, and even much further east, at 58 Waitz, Anthropologie, vol. iii. p. 306. 5 Chas. F. Hall, Life with the Esquimaux, p. 461. Tahiti. These missiles were known to the Malay Polynesians at the commencement of their migrations, and it was only at a later period that they fell into disuse. It is just the same with the Papuans, in whose original home, New Guinea, bows and arrows are never laid aside by the men, although these weapons are totally wanting among the kindred inhabitants of New Caledonia. On the other hand, the Fijians, a race with crowns of hair, like those of the Papuans of New Guinea, certainly brought bows and arrows to their island, but they now use them only for throwing burning missiles into fortified places, or they leave them to the women who are thus able to assist in the defence of their stockades. The favourite weapons of the men are the club and the spear. The Tongans relearned to use bows and arrows from their neighbours on the Fiji Islands.3 It is easy to see why bows and arrows were forgotten on the South Sea Islands. The management of these weapons requires great skill and constant practice. Where they are in use among savage nations, travellers inform us that even the boys practise shooting with miniature implements. In the hands of an expert, the bow is far more effective in the chase than our fire-arms, for it kills in silence. An arrow which has missed its mark falls unobserved, so that the marksman can aim two or three missiles without alarming the game. We need not wonder therefore that the traveller Marcou met hunters in New Mexico, with white skin, and of Spanish descent, who had laid aside their guns and taken to the Indian weapons, which they considered better adapted for the chase. As a further confirmation, Reinhold Hensel records that the Coroados of Brazil refused to exchange their bows and arrows for fire-arms, as, on account of their noisy report, their weight, the loss of time in loading, and the difficulty of procuring ammunition, the latter were ill suited for hunting in tropical forests.5 But excellence in the use of this instrument requires incessant practice, a condition which among savage nations will only be ful 1 Waitz, Anthropologie der Naturvölker. 2 Thomas Williams, Fiji and the Fijians. 4 Lartet and Christy, Reliquiae Aquitanicae. 5 Zeitschrift für Ethnologie. 1869. |