197 



his had belonged to his lather before him, and it was an heirloom. 

 A few locally made blow-pipes were however seen : these were mncli 

 clumsier tlian those made by the liill peojde. Tn general design lliey 

 resembled the usual type found in Selangoi-. Negri Sembilan and 

 N, E. Pahang, having a conical wooden mouth-]nece and a lasliing of 

 rattan binding around the distal end of the outer tube. The baml^oo 

 of this tube was split longitudinally all round into a number of thin 

 strips by cutting out long wedge-shaped pieces, the broader ends of 

 the wedges lying towai-ds the muzzle. The strips of bamboo into 

 which the muzzle of the outer tube was thus divided were drawn to- 

 gether again into cylindrical form, this necessarily leaving the muzzle 

 with a diameter considerably less than that of the rest of the tube. 

 To keep the strips together they were lapped round with the rattan 

 binding mentioned above, which is covered over with some kind of 

 gum or resin, that most generally used being " gettah malau " 

 or " ambalau." 



The purpose of treating the end of the outer bamboo in this 

 manner is to give it a good grip on the inner tube. Pangan 

 statements as to the difficulty of obtaining suitable bamboos for 

 making blow-pipes were supported by two peculiarities in the 

 outer or covering tube of most of the locally made specimens, 

 one being that the weapons were rather clumsy since the bamboos 

 used for the outer tubes were considerably larger than those 

 generally employed by the jungle tribes of Selangor or Negri 

 Sembilan ; the other that each outer tube was made in two 

 sections, and consisted of a long proximal joint, a whole internode, 

 into which a shorter piece was fitted to form the distal or muzzle 

 section. These two pieces were joined by shaving down one 

 end of the bamboo which was to form the muzzle section for a length 

 of about seven cms. and then pushing this portion into the distal 

 section, the joint being strengthened by a binding of rattan around 

 the end of the enclosing bamboo Other aboriginal tribes generally 

 use either a single long internode to form the outer tube or 

 else cut two internodes with their connecting node, and poke out 

 the septum to allow the passage of the inner tube ; the remaining 

 thickened ring from which the septum arose helping to keep the 

 inner tube in position. There are, however, several specimens of 

 blow-pipes in the Perak Museum in which the outer tube is 

 composed of two pieces, these mostly being from the Slim district of 

 Batang Padang, and it is noticeable that in all these the proximal 

 section is made from a rather large bamboo a-^d the distal from one 

 which is a good deal smaller. These remarks also hold good for the 

 Pangan blow-pipes, and it seems likely that the reason for making 

 the outer tube in two pieces is that certain tribes have adopted 

 rather a different method of insuring the rigidity of the inner tube, 

 this probably again being owing to the local distribution of diffei-ent 

 species of bamboo. For this purpose the Upper Perak people rely 



