WEAPONS 243 



scarcely any obedience seems due from children to their parents, 

 most of the ordinary tasks of life are undertaken by young 

 people of both sexes, and much deference is paid to age, 

 especially when it is combined with wealth. 



The domestic animals of the Nicobarese are swine, cats, 

 fowls, and dogs, the latter generally of the pariah variety ; but 

 now and again in the southern islands a mongrel chow is met 

 with, a cross between the chow and some animal brought 

 thither by the Chinese junks. All are the descendants of 

 introduced species. They are fed on little else but coconut, 

 and support life on this and the results of their own foraging. 

 Pigeons, parrots, and monkeys are occasionally to be seen in 

 captivity, but the natives have not attempted to systemati- 

 cally utilise the megapode ; all the laying - places near the 

 villages are, however, known, and periodically overhauled for 

 eggs.* 



Weapons, in the strict sense of the word, do not exist now 

 among the Nicobarese ; they possess no shields, swords, clubs, 

 or spears for warlike purposes only. The Burmese ddo^ their 

 most common implement — obtained from the ship-traders — is 

 used for everyday purposes and for house-building, agriculture, 

 canoe-fitting, etc., while the spears and harpoons used for pig- 

 killing, cattle-hunting, and fishing are nearly all constructed by 

 attaching a suitable haft to the variously shaped heads which 

 are made locally. A fishing spear of native make is of the 

 many-pronged wooden type (Mai, sWempang) common through- 

 out the East — a bunch of diverging barbed skewers spliced into 

 a haft with lashings of cord or rattan. 



The Shom Pen manufacture a javelin or dart, which is used 

 indiscriminately for warfare or the chase as occasion may require ; 

 it is made of a single piece of heavy wood, and is possibly the 



* The only place where the domestication of the megapode is recorded 

 IS the island of Savo in the Solomons. Here the birds may be seen sitting 

 quietly on the fences about the villages, and the laying-grounds are regularly 

 portioned out amongst the inhabitants. — Vide Among the Man-eaters, by 

 John Gaggin ; London, Fisher Unwin. 



