882 The Blow-Gun. 



inner barrel which makes the Macoushie gun superior to all others. 

 The ourah is only found on the sandstone ridge of the upper 

 Orinoco. It grows to a height of fifteen feet without a joint. The 

 diameter of the reed is only half an inch, while its thickness is not 

 more than twice that of a playing-card. Its interior is by nature 

 highly polished and is of a regular bore, contracting slightly from 

 one end to the other. But this reed cannot be used alone, for it is 

 fragile, and the thinness of its walls allows it to bend when held 

 away from the vertical position ; so it is incased in another tube 

 made of a species of palm. A rod of this, having the proper 

 diameter, is cut and steeped in water, which allows its interior pulp 

 to be taken out. Into this tube, called the samourah, is slipped the 

 ourah reed, and the savage gunmaker has a wonderful skill in 

 straightening the axis of his gun-barrel, and neatly fitting it to the 

 interior of the samourah, where it is firmly fixed in place by the 

 black kurumanni wax. The samourah is then scraped down to the 

 proper thickness and polished. 



The mouth-end, or breech, of the gun is bound with a string 

 made of silk-grass. The muzzle is slid through a hole in the saucer- 

 shaped piece of acuero nut, and the space between the interior of the 

 nut and the tube is filled with kurumanni wax. This nut forms a 

 ferrule to the tube and also serves as the front sight of the gun. 

 The rear sight is ingeniously formed of two of the lower incisors of 

 a rodent called the acouchi. These teeth are cemented to the tube 

 with wax, with their convex sides upward. In the space between 

 these teeth the wax is depressed, so as to form a rear sight similar 

 to the open sight of a rifle, at about two feet distant from the mouth- 

 piece. This tube, though very strong, is quite light. It is eleven 

 feet long, and it weighs only one pound and a half. 



The arrows propelled by this gun are about the size of knitting- 

 needles. They are formed of the leaf-ribs of the coucourite palm. 

 The Indian forms the shafts of his arrows and points them by draw : 

 ing these leaf-ribs between the sharp-edged teeth of the pirai fish. 

 On one end of the arrow is wound a pear-shaped mass of wild 

 cotton and fastened there with a fiber of silk-grass. The arrows 

 are woven together, so that they may be coiled on a reel, and safely 

 carried in a water-proof quiver. 



The Indians of Guiana also use a very ingenious arrow. In 



