SAVAGE WEAPONS AT THE CENTENNIAL EXHIBITION. 235 



A strangling noose, a few feet long, with a bone or wooden pointed 

 stick at one end and a worked eye at the other, is used by the Australian 

 to garrote a sleeping enemy. Passing the noose over the head and 

 thrusting the skewer through the loop, he throttles his victim, who is 

 powerless to make a noise, and, throwing him over his shoulder, carries 

 him from the camp. 08 



II. — Axes. 



If the name of a tool is to be determined by its shape and mode of 

 usage, the first axe was of wood. The Australian department showed 

 several bludgeons, the enlarged flattened ends of which had sharp edges. 

 Being of blue gum (Eucalyptus globulus), a hard heavy wood, they are 

 efficient weapons in war 

 or in hunting, though not 

 suitable for felling tim- 

 ber. They are shown at 

 a b, in Fig. 35; c d are 

 from New Zealand, and 

 e is from the Ilaidah In- 

 dians of Bella-Bella, Brit- 

 ish Columbia. 



The transition from one 

 material to another may 

 be traced in many coun- 

 tries in yet-existing tools ; 

 the change is one of the 

 most interesting prob- 

 lems of the archaist and 

 ethnologist, and it is rec- 

 ognized in a Chinese 

 tradition : " Fuhi made 

 weapons; these were of 

 wood; those of Shin- 

 nung were of stone; then 

 Chi-yu made metallic 

 ones."' 



After the club or shin g- 

 stone,in which a bowlder 

 is mounted on a withe, 

 or bound to a stick, or 



Shing at the end of araw- Fig. 35.— Wooden axes, from 



hide thong, comes an at- 

 tempt to give a cutting edge to the tool. It need not be merely as- 

 sumed, as it is capable of demonstration, that the mounting of un- 

 wrought spalls of stone preceded the fashioning of stone axes. The 



68 Smith's " Aborigines of Victoria," i, 351, Fig. 1GD. 



