150 PYGMIES AND PAPUANS 



industry in making these elaborate weapons, for it must 

 be remembered that until we visited the country they had 

 no metal tools whatever, with the exception of two or 

 three scraps of soft iron, and all their work was done 

 with shell knives and stone axes. The knives are simply 

 the shells of a common freshwater bivalve (Cyrena sp.) ; 

 when these are rubbed down on a stone, they take on an 

 exceedingly sharp edge and are used by the natives for 

 carving the canoes and drums and sharpening their spears 

 and arrows. 



The stone axes used in the Mimika district are all of 

 the same type, though they vary greatly in size from 

 about four inches to large ones of nearly twelve inches in 

 length. The stone of which they are made is always the 

 same, a quartzite. The shaft is about two feet long and 

 is invariably made of the butt end of a bamboo. A hole 

 is bored and burnt in the lower end of the bamboo, that 

 is to say in the solid part of the wood below the first 

 joint, and the pointed end of the stone is jammed into 

 the hole. The stone is always fixed axe-fashion, i.e. with 

 its broad surface and cutting edge in the same plane with 

 the long axis of the handle, and not adze-fashion, as is 

 the custom in some other parts of New Guinea (see 

 illustration p. 142). The axes quickly become blunt 

 with use and they are sharpened by being rubbed upon 

 another stone. At Wakatimi stones are very rare and 

 one man appeared to be the stone-smith of the village. 

 I remember seeing him one day sitting outside his hut 

 sharpening an axe, with three or four others lying beside 

 him waiting to be done, while a few yards away a woman 

 was splitting a log of wood with a stone axe. It struck 



