THE STONE AGE — PAST AND PRESENT. 219 



peculiarly suitable for sucli purposes, that where a knife of 

 glass, or a weapon armed with it, is found, it may be confi- 

 dently set down as the immediate successor of a stone one. 

 The Fuegians and the Andaman Islanders are found to have 

 used in this manner the bits of broken glass that came in their 

 way ; the New Zealanders have been observed to take a piece 

 of glass in place of the sharp stone with which they cut their 

 bodies in mourning for the dead ; and the North American 

 Indians to fix one in a wooden handle, in place of the sharp 

 stone with which the native phleme used to be armed.^ The 

 Australians substituted such pieces, when they could get them, 

 for the angular pieces of stone with which their lances and 

 jagged knives were mounted. Mr. Christy has some interesting 

 specimens of these Australian instruments, which date them- 

 selves in a curious way as belonging to the time of contact 

 with Europeans. They were originally set with stone teeth; 

 but where these have been knocked out, their places have been 

 filled by new ones of broken glass. 



To complete the survey of the Stone Age and its traces in 

 the world, Africa has now to be more fully examined. This 

 great continent is now entirely in the Iron Age. The tribes 

 who do not smelt their own iron, as the Bushmen, get their sup- 

 plies from others ; and in the immense central and western 

 tracts above the Equator, there appears to be no record of 

 tribes living without it. In South Africa, however, the case 

 is different ; and the accounts of the English voyages round 

 the Cape of Good Hope about the beginning of the seventeenth 

 century, collected in Purchases "^ Pilgrim es,^ give quite a clear 

 history of the transition from the Stone to the Iron Age, which 

 was then taking place. 



Then as now;, the inhabitants of Madagascar had their iron 

 knives and spear-heads; and they would have silver in pay- 

 ment for their cattle. Is. for a sheep, and ds. 6d. for a cow. 

 But on the West African coast, north of the Cape, there were 

 pastoral tribes, probably Hottentots, who evidently did not 

 know then, as they do now, how to work the abundant iron 



1 Fitz Eoy, Voy. of H.M.S. Adventure and Beagle ; London, 1839, vol. ii. 

 p. 184. Mouat, p. 305. Yate, p. 243. Loskiel, p. 144. 



