Patience in Manufacturing Weapons. 
3SS 
of a celt, and fix this into the broad side of the club. These club-celts 
possess aii extraordinary, I might almost say absolute, correspondence 
with the old German fighting celts, which Ave now so often find in pre- 
historic graves (Hünengräbern) . The tips of the arrows consist either 
of the spine of a sting-ray, of fish-bone, bone, or a spear-sh aped piece 
of bambu to which they ascribe poisonous 'qualities. With this latter 
they chiefly kill tapir and bush-liog. Amongst the weapons that proved 
of the greatest interest to me was the blow-gun, a hunting implement 
that I had never before met with in such numbers amongst any tribe or 
in any settlement as here, for even every little boy possessed a miniature 
one. The complete hunting outfit consists of the generally 12 to 14 foot 
long blow-gun (Cura of the Macusis, Ilirua of the Paravillianos) , the 
quiver (Muyeh), arrows (Cungwa), the lower jaw of the voracious 
pirate-fish ( Pygocentrus niger), the seed-covering (“silk-cotton”) of the 
Bombax globosum (Assareh), and the fibres of Bromelia Karatas. But 
of the whole apparatus, the Macusis finish only the latter parts: they 
obtain the blow-gun itself in barter from the Arecunas, Maiongkongs, 
and Guinaus. The dexterity with which they handle it is really worthy 
of admiration for they can accurately and forcibly drive the arrow, over 
12 inches in length, along a horizontal direction into an object more than 
50 feet away. Small mammals and birds are the main quarry for this 
hunting weapon, although bigger game are now and again killed with it, 
the result, however, certainly depending in such cases only upon the 
strength of the poison. It is a peculiar phenomenon that the effects of 
the poison are rendered visible considerably quicker in apes than in other 
animals of corresponding size. The plant ( Arundinaria Schomburgldi 
Benth., Curata of the Macusis) which supplies the main ingredient of 
the blow-gun, grows only in the country of the Guinaus ar.d Maiong- 
kongs, on the upper Parima, and probably in the environs of the sources 
of the Orinoco, where my brother first discovered it. The stalk rises 
quite cylindrically from the rhizome without any nodes often to a height 
of 15 feet, when the first little branches are given off, and the nodes con- 
tinue at regular intervals of from 15 to 18 inches up to a height of 40 to 
50 feet. The adult cane is usually li inches in circumference at its base, 
has a brilliant green colour, is smooth, and contains a somewhat more 
than Jin. diam. cylindrical cavity. The Indian invariably chooses only the 
young stalk for the manufacture of his weapon. Having cut such an 
one to the required length, he holds it above a moderate fire, over which 
he rolls it along its own axis, whereby shrinking is prevented, until he 
believes that the greater part of the moisture is evaporated, when he 
hangs it up in the sun until such time as the yellow colouring shows 
that all the remainder is removed. But as such a weapon would be so 
easily exposed to damage on their hunting excursions, the Indians manu- 
facture a sort of sheath out of the slender and thin stem of a palm, 
belonging to the family Arecineae I, into which the cane is driven and 
fastened: for this purpose the stem, as straight as a thread, is placed for 
several days in water and the decomposed pith then pushed out with a 
rod. They called the sheath Curiira-curapong. A second kind of blow- 
gun, which nevertheless is much heavier, is found amongst the Indian 
