seems to be to raise the hams of the Indian, when sitting, out of the reach of the jiggers which usually abound on the floors of the houses, and are painful enough when they enter the flesh of the feet, but are far more inconvenient in other parts of the body. These benches are from six to ten inches high, and they are often so carefully scooped out and shaped to fit the body of the sitter that they are as comfortable as any cushioned stool could be. They are often formed into grotesque figures of tortoises, frogs, armadilloes, alligators, and other animals. One in the Christy collection, which, though not from Guiana, is Carib, is in the form of a man on all fours, the middle of his back forming the seat. Bright-coloured seeds, and occasionally pebbles, are inserted to represent the eyes.

But, after all, the greatest time and care is spent in fashioning weapons, both offensive and defensive. These, instead of being roughly finished, as are boats, benches, and such large articles, are smoothed and polished as carefully as any piece of European furniture. For the first rough smoothing the palate bones of certain fish are used in place of files; for the final smoothing the rough leaves of the trumpet-wood (Cecropia peltata) are used in place of sand-paper by the Forest Indians, the somewhat similar leaves of a shrub (Curatella americana), very common on the savannahs, by the Savannah Indians.

Of weapons of war the only kind now to be seen is the war-club, called tiki by the Carib tribes; and even these are probably no longer made, and are carried more as ornaments than for use. They are made of hard heavy wood, and are often highly ornamented, being covered with a pattern formed by engraving and filling the lines thus made with a white earth, brightly polished, and neatly bound with large quantities of red or white cotton from which fringes. and streamers, tasselled with bright-coloured feathers, hang loose. Originally, apparently, they differed in shape according to the tribe which made them; but these differences, as in so many other similar cases, seem now to be somewhat

BENCHES AND WAR-CLUBS.

299

lost, and most of the various forms of tiki may be seen in possession of any one of the tribes. The commoner forms are three in number. One is four-sided; that part which is grasped in the hand is square, but from that point the sides gradually curve outward, the one end much more than the other, until they are abruptly cut off and end in both directions in flat surfaces at right angles to the sides (Fig. 24 c and d). This form appears to have been appropriated by the Macusis. C Another type is shaped somewhat like a paddle, with a thin

enemy

rounded shaft and a broad, flat, somewhat oval blade; but the shaft, unlike that of a paddle, tapers to a very sharp point, which is said to be intended to stick into the ear of the as a coup de grâce after he has been knocked down by a blow from the knife-like edge of the blade. Different varieties of this type seem to have been appropriated by the Wapiana and the Arecuna (Fig. 24 a and b). The third kind is wedge-shaped, the pointed edge being that which forms the handle. There is nothing to show to what tribe this form originally belonged, and it is the rarest of all. A very severe blow could cer

tainly be inflicted with any one of these weapons. From specimens existing in English and European museums, derived from Guiana and the neighbouring parts of South America, it would appear that these clubs were occasionally made yet more formidable by the addition of a stone axeblade, or in later times a similar blade of iron, which was occasionally fixed into the side (Fig. 43, p. 425).1

Hunting weapons, such as the blow-pipe with its apparatus, and bows and arrows, are made in much greater number; for while warfare among the Indians is now almost entirely at an end, hunting is as necessary to them as ever.

The blow-pipe is not complete without the quiver, with its complement of darts, and a small basket of peculiar shape containing cotton or other natural fibre, which, being wrapped round the blunt end of the dart, serves, as the 'feathering' of an arrow, to balance it. The gigantic hollow reed (Arundinaria Schomburgkii) of which the main part of the blowpipe itself is made, is said to grow only in the country about the sources of the Orinoco. Of all the tribes of British Guiana the Arecunas live nearest to that district; and it is these, therefore, who procure the reeds and make the blowpipes, or perhaps sometimes procure ready-made blow-pipes from yet more remote Indians, which they distribute among the other Indians. A straight piece of the reed of length sufficient for the blow-pipe, which may vary from eight to fourteen feet, is cut from between any two of the widely separated nodes, and is thoroughly dried, first by fire and then in the sun, care being taken to prevent warping. This reed forms the required barrel. It would, however, if left unstrengthened, bend after a time. To obviate this, the straight slender stem of a certain palm, which is also procured from a distance, by means of barter, is bored throughout its length, with a long sharply pointed stick; and within the rigid tube thus made the reed is inserted, as in a sheath. The end to which the mouth is to be applied when the pipe

1 Since this was written I have been fortunate enongh to procure one of these wooden war-clubs with a stone blade, from the Essequibo River.

is used is left as it is, or at most it is neatly bound with string; but on the opposite end, to prevent dirt from getting into the tube when it stands on that end on the ground, the cup-like half of a round hollow palm seed is fixed, like the lip of a trumpet. Generally, but not always, two peccary teeth are fastened, close together and parallel to each other, on the outside of the tube, near the end; and these serve as 'sights.' The blow-pipe is then complete in all essential points. But sometimes, merely for the sake of ornament, a close covering of basketwork-the so-called pegall work, which has been already described-is put round it. Most of the examples in European museums have this added ornament; but such are, according to my own experience, rarely actually used by the Indians. To prevent any chance of the tube losing its straightness it is very seldom allowed to rest on its end on the earth, but, when not in use, it generally hangs, passed through two slings, parallel to the ground.

The quiver (Fig. 15, p. 246) in which the darts are carried is in shape exactly like a dice-box, but larger. It is made of wickerwork thickly coated on the outside with the black pitch-like substance which is made and used by the Indians for so many purposes. Attached to the quiver by a string is a lid, made of the tough hide of the tapir (Tapirus americanus). Inside the quiver is a bundle of darts, the whole lower jaw of a perai-fish (Serasalmo niger), and some crowia fibre. The darts, each about eight inches long, are made simply of splinters of the woody midrib of the cokerite palm (Maximiliana regia), as sharp as needles, which are dipped in urari poison. They are fastened together, palisade-fashion, by means of two parallel plaits of string (Fig. 25, p. 302); and the band of darts thus made is wrapped lightly round a stick, the upper end of which-that towards which are the points of the dart is provided with a few sticks tied together into the form of a wheel; the object of this latter arrangement being to protect the hand of the Indian from any chance contact with the poison-smeared points of the darts (Fig. 26, p. 302).

It will easily be understood that any single dart may readily be slipped out from the bundle the moment before it is to be used. With two or three crowia fibres, sufficient cotton, or whatever fibre is used for the purpose-which is carried in a

FIG. 25.

DARTS FOR BLOW-PIPE, UNROLLED FROM GUARD.

small wicker-basket, bottle-shaped, or like a sack tied in near its mouth, which hangs by a string from the side of the quiver -is tied on to the blunt end of the dart to fill the diameter of the blow-pipe; so that when the Indian blows into the tube

FIG. 26.

DARTS, ROLLED AS CARRIED IN QUIVER.

behind the dart the latter is propelled with force and expelled into the air. It is thus apparent that the whole apparatus, though so admirably suited for its purpose, is very simply but skilfully made.

Of the ourali, called also curare and urari, the poison used