NARRATIVE OF THE CRUISE. 
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mounted, and they appeared to have gone out of use. Axes made of hard volcanic 
rock were also obtained from the houses. They have ground surfaces and are triangular 
in form, and resemble the stone adzes of the Solomon Islands, but are mounted in an 
entirely different and very primitive way, as axes, being merely jammed in a slot cut in 
a club-like billet of hard wood near its end. Only one specimen was obtained thus 
mounted (see fig. 249).. These stone implements did not seem plentiful, and the natives 
Fig. 248. — Large Adze Blades of Tridacna and Hippopus shells, only partly ground, Admiralty Islands. 
valued them highly and required a high price for them ; and when a Humboldt Bay 
stone axe was shown to them to try and explain that it was desired to buy such from 
them, they were immediately anxious to purchase it themselves. The chief had a very 
fine large one, with which he would not part. 
The heads of the obsidian bladed spears, the principal weapon of the natives, serve as 
knives, being cut off just below the ornamented mounting which acts as a handle. 1 Long 
flakes of obsidian are, however, also mounted specially as knives in short handles (see 
PI. I. figs. 1, 2). They are exceedingly sharp, and are used even for shaving, but are of 
course very brittle. Pieces of pearl oyster shell, usually semicircular in shape, ground down 
1 This is an interesting instance of the same instruments serving different purposes in a rude condition of the 
arts, other cases of which have been dwelt on by General Lane Fox, F.R.S., Lectures on Primitive Warfare, 
Journ. Boy. United Service Inst., 1867-69. 
