SS6 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
IMarch 19, 1904, 
iPORT^riAN TOURIST 
Blowpipe Men of the Philippi 
Manila, P. I., Jan. 15. — Editor Forest and Stream: 
There is a strange class of individuals in the Philippine 
Islands, who utilize the blowpipe oi bamboo or other 
wood for hundreds of purposes in peaceful pursuits and 
in battle. _ The annexed illustrations are for the pur- 
pose of giving the reader an idea of the nature of these 
odd weapons. Figure i is the commonest description 
of blowpipe used by the natives for the purpose of 
shooting clay balls, darts, little arrows and the like. 
This crude affair is made from a section of wood about 
three feet long and from one to two inches in diameter, 
with the hollow portion about half the original exterior 
diameter. The exterior is usually rough and crude in 
the bambo stock, but the interior is quite free and 
smooth, except the ridges at the partition walls, which 
ridges may be removed by 'using a scraping affair, 
leaving the interior channel very even and ready for 
passage of an object. But these tubes are not always 
for shooting darts and objects. They are used by the 
smiths and metal workers to blow the heat upon a 
piece of metal in the manufacture of metallic parts. 
Quite a good air-blast is possible with the device. 
We next show the smooth surfaced bahooey wood, 
which is provided with a sappy interior, which is re- 
moved by means of pushing instruments through, re- 
sulting in effecting a very 
even channel through which 
darts and other obj ects may be 
blown. The native becomes 
quite expert . with the tube. 
He can shoot straight and 
well. He can use great force 
with his wind, and manages 
to make the dart or clay ball 
reach its target. In figure 3 
is another type of tube which 
is employed by the natives. 
I saw these in use by some 
of the More tribesmen of the 
island of Mindanao. A straight 
piece of the wood is chosen, 
and the bore made. Then 
a flanged piece is inserted to 
a rod A, as shown. The 
native inserts the object to 
be shot from the tube, in the 
head, and introduces the 
flange of the rod. A quick, 
sharp blow is made, and the 
object is sent out of the tube 
with speed to its destination. 
Of course, the natives make 
the ammunition more ef- 
fective by applying poison to 
the points. They use poisons 
obtained from poisonous reptiles and woods. 
The arrow tube gun is exhibited in figure 4. It con- 
sists of the stock of the piece being made of hard wood, 
with a boring burned through the barrel portion. A 
strong wood bow is adjusted to this stock as shown, 
and the native draws the cord with the arrow to be 
discharged placed as at B. As soon as released, the 
arrow shoots forward with considerable speed and 
force. Figure 5 is for the purpose of illustrating the 
wood plug amunition some- 
times used in the blowpipes. 
These plugs are loaded with 
a powder made of charcoal 
and saltpeter secured by the 
natives in the hills. The 
powder is placed inside the 
little piece C, and there is a 
fuse attached. The fuse is , 
lighted and the projectile is 
blown forth by the native. It 
usually explodes far from its 
mark, and seldom does much 
damage, and is more of a 
Fourth of July display than 
anything else. Figure 6 
shows one of the clay balls 
made by puddling clay and 
rolling in the palms of the 
hands to proper form, finally 
baking it. Some of the pro- 
jectiles, made in the form of 
the one in figure 7, are shaped 
from clay, others from wood 
or metal. I saw some of 
these designed from stone. 
Figure 8 is a sketch of the 
dart plan. It is a hard wood 
piece, tipped with steel carry- 
ing poison. There are feath- 
ers arranged to guide the dart, as shown. Some darts 
are of the prick order only, as shown in figure 9, with 
a nfeedle-likc affair inserted. Many of the arrows used 
are fitted with heads of metal or stone, as in figure 10. 
The head sticks firmly in the f^esh when imbedded. I 
Sfiw some remarkably nicely decorated shooting tubes 
in the possession of the sultans and •chiefs of tribes 
on Mindanao Island. Figure 11 is an example. The 
tube is entwined with coils of wood, as shown, and 
these parts are all neatly smoothed and polished, with 
the result that an exceedingly good effect follows. 
In figure 12 is a sample of one of the stocks of the 
tubes, showing engravings and gems placed thereon to 
the value of several hundred dollars. The natives of 
Jolo get oyster pearls, and a little silver is mined. 
These articles are utilized to decorate the tube head, as 
shown. The natives are very proud of these ornamented 
blowpipes. One of the most attractive blowpipes I 
saw is sketched in figure 13. When held up to blow 
through, the link at lower end drops down and the 
mouth can be adjusted closely to curved portion, where 
the bore is and the blast of air sent forth. The head 
is ornamented with a skull effect, the teeth of the jaws 
of vvhich were said to be those of enemies v^ho were 
slain by the poisoned darts blown from the tube. There 
were precious metal attachments, and fine polish, to 
add to the beauty of the pipe. Traveler 
Floating Down the Mississippi. 
VII.— A G>ttoa Town. 
When I reached Tiptonville I was fortunate in being 
directed to Mrs. Foster's, when I asked for a place to 
board for a few days. Mrs. Foster's house is a two-story 
one, with a front view to the north. A weedy field 
bounded on the far side .by a many-strand wire fence, 
one post of which is a tall cypress tree, on which the last 
negro hung in town was lynched. Beyond is an old bend 
of the river — a place where the current used to come 
sweeping round sawing into the banks, but a few years 
ago a sand bar formed, and now green willows, and a 
streak of white sand are where the river flowed. 
With the scenery different, and the weather strange, 
the tourist naturally expects to find another kind of peo- 
ple, and he is not disappointed. Likely enough he will 
find himself to be the oddest type of all, and his own land 
a curious combinaton of egotism, frailties, energies and 
versatilities, such as he had never dreamed. A traveler 
who walks backwards, and keeps his glasses focussed on 
"home," is bound, sure pop, to see what he had never 
seen, and find what his dreams had never showed. It 
seems to me that the plainsman in the hills gets the best 
view of his own land possible, while an Adirondack stray 
in a cypress brake gets to know his own beech flats as 
never before. 
As I was going over to Reelfoot Lake, bag and bag- 
gage sooner or later, I asked if there was a man in town 
who would carry my boat and duffle from the river to 
the lake. Mrs. Foster gave me the name, "Jim Miller," 
and over town I heard he had a gray horse in his team- — 
last seen down by a cotton gin. I went that way, and 
found the gray-horse-team. But when I asked for Miller, 
a negro shunted me round the corner of the gin, asking 
as he walked, "Whar you gwin to carry Jim to?" Jim 
didn't show up at all, so far as I know, but one who 
"drives his team" took my stuff and volunteered the in- 
formation that Jim was over at Reelfoot Lake. 
I don't know at this writing that I have seen Miller 
since I got to town, but there can be no doubt that I was, 
for a time at least, a suspicious person from the view 
point of the darkies. 
One is puzzled by the use of grease by southern cooks. 
They fry potatoes, and serve the dish, sometimes at least, 
so saturated that the bottom of the dish is half an inch 
deep with melted lard. So with meat and most other 
things. It was all I could do to keep Stevenson — with 
whom I came as far as Tiptonville from Kaskaskia — 
from putting lard on beefsteak "to soften it up." 
They fry bacon in lard sometimes. 
I can account for the use of grease in such large 
quantities only by the fact that in the old days bears 
were very numerous throughout the Mississippi country. 
I'he bears were very fat, and this fat was tried or rend- 
ered out, and some of the hardier frontiersmen, at least, 
would drink a pint of the thin, sweetish grease at a 
draught. The grease and the meat of bears was one time 
exported from New Madrid in such quantities that the 
river at that point was called "Grease Bay," "L'Anse de la 
Grasse." And by similar historical antecedents, one may 
account for the use of knives in conveying food from the 
plate to the mouth, which for a long while has. excited 
comment from travelers who came from regions with dif- 
ferent or less pronounced traditions and customs. The 
men who opened up the cotton and corn lands of the 
Mississippi carried a big knife, with which they dressed 
their game and ate their meat. They had no forks, and 
complained that porcelain dulled the hunting blade. The 
test of friendship was to break one's knife in two when 
a comrade lost his. The fork is a comparatively recent 
table utensil, and its use as a shovel in northern coun- 
niunities is only less frequent than in southern. 
One day I walked down to the lower landing , at the 
river, and on my return was overtaken by a youngish, 
but weazened, withered little man in a buggy. 
"I don't suppose up in your country you have such 
little, unhealthy kind of men like me, do you ?" he asked 
iu a tone of sickly dejection. Lake county chills a^d 
tobacco from childhood had stunted him. One of the 
hardest sights I had seen, was a boy of eight or nine with 
a cigar as large round as my thumb in his lips, clutched 
with two fingers over the top, as he rode in a cotton 
wagon the sides of which came up to his shoulders, and 
I told the man it "seems like the tobacco gets used to 
young, don't it?" 
"Shaw !" he exclaimed, more astonished than dissent- 
ing. Certain it is that there is a "right smaft" of 
tobacco used in the region — in spite of mothers and their 
old buggy whips. _ To hear a boy of fourteen say "1 can't 
stop it!" of smoking and chewing 'tobacco, is something 
to add a different feature to one's sensations. But the 
use of tobacco, and the features of chewing tobacco which 
fills so much space in books of travel written by foreign- 
ers befote the war, is plainly not so bad now, as then. 
But it is bad enough, especially as regards foolish and un- 
fortunate little boys who, in their ambition to be men, do 
the things that usually prevent their becoming thoroughly 
manly, physically at least. 
Type for type — clerk, merchant, politician, ex-soldier, 
the bearing of men in the South is on the average a bit 
more erect, and more direct in the gaze — seeming to 
indicate haughtiness in their natures, which more than 
anything else makes the tourist realize that he is in a 
part of the country different from his own. 
A look beyond one's temporary residence quite verifies 
this difference. Tiptonville is a cotton town, and to one 
from a spruce bark camp in the Adirondacks it was a 
right interesting place. 
One who approaches Tiptonville by way of any of the 
land routes — from up stream or down, or from Obion- — 
is greeted by numerous advertisements nailed to trees and 
fences along the highways. As the place has no railroad, 
and the steamer landing is usuallytwo miles from town — 
on account of the sand bar that has thrust itself across 
the town front — fortunately for the town's existence, one 
must see these insistent proclaimers of various wares. 
It is a surprise to see them— nowhere in New York State 
have I seen so many bill boards for a town of even 2,000 
inhabitants, as this one which claims 1,000, as at Tipton- 
ville. Advertising is said to indicate superior enterprise 
according as it wrecks the beauty of a scene — the more 
views a company spoils, the better its advertising depart- 
ment. 
The big signs in the distance, too far to be read, quite 
hurt me, especially as they showed up against a Cypress 
swamp of my dreams, .and rendered some magnificent 
trees horrible around the trunks. I turned the other way 
as much as possible and passed them by unread so far as 
I could, but spite of me I came to know the names of 
the town stores in the order of their advertising insistence 
—which was the triumph of the advertiser, without doubt. 
And then, one day, I found myself walking a mile just 
for the sake of putting down in my note book "the readin' 
on some of the signs." 
_ "So-and-So discounts all prices of any old house this 
side of New York !" "No mistakes in filling prescriptions 
— pure drugs !" "For good shoes go to !" These 
are familiar enough in their form to a sign victim, except 
the first one, which shows a lack of economy in the use 
of space. Several words could be taken out, paint saved 
and the words rendered entirely commercial and unin- 
teresting. But here is one without rhetoric which com- 
mands the attention of unaccustomed eyes : 
"Buggies. At Walbell's Hardware and Furniture Com- 
pany's. Stoves, Ranges, Coffins and Caskets 1" 
Someway or other, the advertisers no matter which 
the firm, always got the stoves and coffins in together. 
It's a novel sight to see coffins blazoned forth on a 
twenty by ten foot advertising sign, especially as it ap- 
pears in connection with cotton fields, cypress trees, and 
the bottom lands of the Mississippi, where there is no 
horizon, but just the nearest line of trees for the dis- 
tances, shutting a man in till he longs for a tall tree to 
climb, and a chance to see that blue which comes of forty 
miles of good air, not of six of miasmic fogs. 
The cost of living is very high — groceries must pay 
the steamboat lines which carry all the freight, "reason- 
able" fifty or seventy-five cents a hundred to bring them 
in, and profits, when the storekeepers are not at war, are 
high enough to be good livings for owners, even though 
stores are located every mile or -two along the bottom 
roads. The negroes get fifty cents a hundred pounds for 
picking cotton, and pick from 200 to 700 (record) pounds 
a day — averaging two doUa-rs or two-fifty a day. They 
work all the week and spend it all on Saturday "evening." 
"A third of a cotton crop only," this year, has hurt the 
storekeepers proportionately. 
At intervals during the day steam whistles sound along 
the brick and wood shores there, and the stranger asking 
about the noise, is _ told it's a gin. In Tiptonville there 
are two gins, and in Lake county seventeen, two closed 
down. They pay 3 cents to 3.50 a pound for seed cotton. 
As the farmer comes in with 3,000 pound loads, and gets 
cash for his gin order at one or other of the two banks, 
it will be seen that "there's plenty of money 'round town." 
Most farmers are contented to leaye their money in the 
bank, however, and do not take it out till necessary to 
pay the pickers on Saturdays, or their bills run up on 
credit during the planting season. It's easier to buy on 
credit — the cash is not seen in the actual process of going 
out till settling time pomes, and not even then, for 
