Page:Journal of the Right Hon. Sir Joseph Banks.djvu/302

244 cultivate, necessarily must. When we first came to Tegadu the crops were just covered, and had not yet begun to sprout; the mould was as smooth as in a garden, and every root had its small hillock, all ranged in a regular quincunx by lines, which with the pegs still remained in the field.

We had not an opportunity of seeing them work, but once saw their tool, which is a long and narrow stake, flattened a little and sharpened; across this is fixed a piece of stick for the convenience of pressing it down with the foot. With this simple tool, industry teaches them to turn pieces of ground of six or seven acres in extent. The soil is generally sandy, and is therefore easily turned up, while the narrowness of the tool, the blade of which is not more than three inches broad, makes it meet with the less resistance.

Tillage, weaving, and the rest of the arts of peace are best known and most practised in the north-eastern parts; indeed, in the southern there is little to be seen of any of them; but war seems to be equally known to all, though most practised in the south-west. The mind of man, ever ingenious in inventing instruments of destruction, has not been idle here. Their weapons, though few, are well calculated for bloody fights, and the destruction of numbers. Defensive weapons they have none, and no missives except stones and darts, which are chiefly used in defending their forts; so that if two bodies should meet either in boats or upon the plain ground, they must fight hand to hand and the slaughter be consequently immense.

Of their weapons, the spears are made of hard wood pointed at both ends, sometimes headed with human bones; some are fourteen or fifteen feet long. They are grasped by the middle, so that the end which hangs behind, serving as a balance to keep the front steady, makes it much more difficult to parry a push from one of them than it would from one of a spear only half as long which was held by the end. Their battle-axes, likewise made of a very hard wood, are about six feet long, the bottom of the handle pointed, and the blade, which is exactly like that of an axe but broader, made very