55-4 ISOLATION OF SAVAGES. 



" march" or neutral territory, supplies the necessary conditions 

 and keeps them apart. They meet only to fight, and are there- 

 fore not likely to learn much from one another. Moreover, 

 there are cases in which some tribes have weapons which are 

 quite unknown to their neighbours. Thus, among the Brazilian 

 tribes we find the bow and arrow, the blow-pipe, the lasso, and 

 the throwing-stick. The first is the most general; but the 

 Barbados use only the blow-pipe, the Moxos have abandoned 

 the bow and arrow for the lasso, and the Purupurus are dis- 

 tinguished from all their neighbours by using, not bows and 

 arrows, but the "palheta," or throwing-stick. Again, the 

 Kaffirs have not generally adopted the bows and arrows of 

 the Bushmen ; the Esquimaux have not acquired the art of 

 making pottery from the North American Indians, nor the 

 southern Columbian tribes from the northern Mexicans. 



Many, again, of the ruder arts, as, for instance, the manu- 

 facture of pottery and of bows, are so useful, and at the same 

 time, however ingenious in idea, so simple in execution, as 

 to render it highly improbable that they would ever be lost 

 when they had once been acquired. Yet we have seen that 

 the New Zealanders and Kaffirs had no bows, and that none 

 of the Polynesians had any knowledge of pottery ; though it 

 is evident from their skill in other manufactures, and their 

 general state of civilization, that they would have found no 

 difficulty in the matter if the manner had once occurred to 

 them. Again, " bolas" are a most effectual weapon, and there 

 is certainly no difficulty in making them, yet the knowledge 

 of them appears to be confined to the Patagonians and the 

 Esquimaux. The art of pottery, on the contrary, sometimes 

 has been, I believe, communicated by one race to another. 

 Nevertheless, there are cases, even among existing races,* in 

 which we seem to find indications of an independent discovery; 

 at any rate, in which the art is in a rudimentary stage. 



* See, lur instance, p. 495. 



