338 USE OF THE BOW AND ARROW. 



offering tempting bunches of bananas; many praising 

 their fighting-cocks, and others the freshness of their 

 eggs. The scenery from the fort was very beautiful ; soft 

 green hills, in many parts crowned with a dense mass of 

 noble trees, extended for miles, in every direction, behind 

 the village. 



This is the only time I have seen the bow and arrow 

 in use among the Malayo-Polynesian tribes ; and although 

 the Javanese are said by Crawford to be extremely fond 

 of the exercise of the bow and arrow, as an amusement ; 

 yet we do not find either the bow, the club, or the sling, 

 among the primitive Dyaks, or any other aborigines of 

 the Indian Islands, except the Bisayan race. At the 

 Bashee Group, the inhabitants of which belong to the 

 same stock as those which people the coasts of Mindoro, 

 although at present an unarmed population, yet retain a 

 recollection of the bow and arrow. We were shown 

 several very long and powerful bows, in the house of the 

 native chief of the mission of San Domingo. Those 

 primitive weapons, the bow and arrow, have given place, 

 among most of the islands, to the more refined invention 

 of shooting envenomed arrows through a long cylindrical 

 tube ; and for hand to hand weapons of aggression, they 

 have fashioned the useful iron into kris blades, and the 

 heads of spears. In Crawford's account of an attack 

 made on Manila by the British, in 1762, it is stated that 

 five thousand Indians " presented themselves, armed with 

 javelins, and with bows and arrows, for the relief of the 

 garrison." * 



In our survey of Ylin, we occasionally regaled ourselves 

 * Hist. Ind. Archipel. vol. ii. p. 475. 



