70 nature's teachings. 



parts of the world, there are low-lying places where carbonic 

 acid gas exudes from the earth, and no living creature can 

 exist in them. Even in this country scarcely a year passes 

 without several deaths occurring from inhalation of the same 

 fatal gas, which has collected in some disused excavation. 

 That there is, therefore, a deadly valley in Java may be true 

 enough, and it is also true that the juice of the upas-tree is 

 poisonous when it mixes with the blood. But the two have no 

 connection with each other, and, so far from the upas-tree 

 poisoning the valley by its exhalations, it could not exist in 

 such an atmosphere. 



Now for the Sumpitan and the arrows. The former is a tube, 

 some seven feet in length, with a bore of about half an inch in 

 diameter, and often elaborately inlaid with metal. I have one 

 in which the whole of the mouthpiece is brass, and the other 

 end of the weapon has been fitted with a large spear-head, 

 exactly on the principle of the bayonet. 



The arrows are very slight, and, in order to make them fit 

 the tube, are furnished at their bases with a conical piece of 

 soft wood. In themselves they would be almost useless as 

 weapons, but when the poison with which their points are 

 armed is fresh, these tiny arrows, of which sixty or seventy 

 are but an ordinary handful, carry death in their points. 

 Though they have no great range, they are projected with 

 much force, and with such rapidity that they cannot be 

 avoided, their slender shafts being almost invisible as they pass 

 through the air. 



The second weapon is the still more dangerous blow-gun of 

 tropical America, called Zarabatana, or Pucunha, according to 

 the locality. Some of these tubes measure more than eleven 

 feet in length, and through them the arrow can be propelled 

 with wonderful force. I have often sent an arrow to a distance 

 of a hundred yards, and with a good aim. 



A native, however, can send it much farther, knack, and not 

 mere capacity of lung, supplying the propelling power, just 

 as it is with the pea- shooter. When the arrow is properly 

 blown through the zarabatana a sharp "pop" ought to be 

 heard, like the sound produced by a finger forced into a 

 thimble and quickly withdrawn, or a cork drawn from a bottle. 



