172 A NATUBALIST IN CELEBES ch. vii 



In passing through the village I noticed in one of the 

 huts some curious spears and shields entirely made of wood. 

 The spears are about seven feet long, and made of some 

 hard wood with a piece of bamboo cut in a wedge-shaped 

 fashion to a sharp point lashed on the end by a piece of 

 rattan ; the shield is about five feet long by one broad, and 

 is composed of three pieces sewn together by coarse stitches 

 of rattan, a middle piece with a large central boss and 

 two wings. These are to the present day the principal 

 weapons used by the natives of the Talaut islands both for 

 warfare and the chase. The Talautese are, in fact, living 

 in what might be called a ' wooden age.' All their imple- 

 ments, weapons, utensils, and tools are made of wood and 

 leaves, and they are destined to remain in that condition 

 until the advent of civilised man : for in those islands, built 

 up in the sea by volcanic and coral action, there are no 

 stones that could be fashioned to form knives and no iron 

 and no copper. It will not be possible for them to pass 

 through a stone age, a bronze age, an iron age, as our own 

 savage ancestors have done ; they must wait until circum- 

 stances allow them to pass directly from the wooden to the 

 civilised condition. 



Before I left one of the men showed me the way they 

 procure fire in those parts. He took a piece of bamboo and 

 split it in two pieces, and then cut a small slit-shaped hole 

 in the middle of one of them. Placing this one on the 

 ground with the concave side downwards, he rubbed the edge 

 of the other one over the hole with a jerky sawing motion 

 until a considerable quantity of smoke appeared. Eapidly 

 removing the piece of bamboo from the ground, he fanned 

 the little heap of smoking sawdust that had been formed 

 with the other bamboo stick, and in a very few minutes the 

 ^heap began to smoulder and burst into flame. 



The whole process was done so quickly and so simply 



