ORIGIN OF WEST AFRICAN CROSSBOWS BALFOUR. 641 



there is hence no peg with which to push the bowstring out of the 

 notch; this action is performed simply with one of the archer's 

 fingers. In respect of the detente, this particular type appears, as 

 von Luschan justl}^ remarks, to exhibit degenerate rather than merely 

 primitive characteristics. An almost identical form of crossbow 

 with long barrel and stock of European shape, from Buea, Kamerun, 

 may be seen in the missionary museum at Basel. Crossbows fitted 

 with barrels are everywhere uncommon, though I have noted in the 

 Berlin Museum an example from Goram Island, in the Malay Archi- 

 pelago. A barrelled crossbow was much in use in western Europe 

 during the seventeenth century. 



Although the distribution in Africa of the crossbow as a serious 

 weapon is so restricted — being confined mainly within the limits 

 of the region extending from the Mandingo countiy to the Sanga 

 and Gaboon districts — there are to be found outside this area certain 

 appliances in which the general principle of crossbow mechanism is 

 adopted, and to which brief reference may be made. J. A. Grant 

 mentions toy crossbows as in use in 1861 among the children at Ukuni 

 in the Unyamwezi country to the south of the Victoria Nyanza,^ Mr. 

 Emil Torday discovered among the southern Ba-Mbala of the Kwilu 

 district in the Kongo State a toy crossbow used by children for shoot- 

 ing seeds and berries.^ In this the form of the stock, which is of 

 pahn midrib, is clearly modeled upon a European gimstock, and the 

 method of release, by means of a toggle and short string attached to 

 the bowstring, is, to the best of my recollection, only to be paralleled 

 amongst crossbows with the crossbows of the Nicobar Islands. Sir 

 H. H. Johnston also mentions the use of toy crossbows among the 

 Ba-Yaka and the Ba-Kongo. These various miniature crossbows, 

 which may very likely be still more widely dispersed in Africa, have 

 but little in common with the West African crossbows with divided 

 stock, and they may well be regarded as referable to a different 

 origin, and as having . been introduced independently into West 

 Africa via the northeast and through Moslem influence, as has been 

 suggested by Sir H. H, Johnston.^ 



A.gain, there is that peculiarly widely distributed appliance, the 

 crossbow trap, varieties of which are to be found in so many widely 

 separated regions of the world. Rat traps of crossbow form are 

 familiar appliances in the French Sahara and Bornuese territory 

 and occur also in German East Africa and, no doubt, elsewhere in 

 Africa ; but it may be doubted whether these have any direct morpho- 

 logical connection with the true West African crossbow weapons, 

 and it is unnecessary to consider them in detail in the present memoir. 



lA Walk Across Africa, 1864, p. 100. 



2 Figured and described in Man, 1907, No. 52, fig. 2. 



3 George Grenfell and The Congo, 1908, vol. 2, pp. 766-767. 

 97578°-^SM 1910 41 



