Page:Journal of the Right Hon. Sir Joseph Banks.djvu/377

1770 had generally simple points of wood; or if they were barbed, it was with only one splinter of wood. The instrument with which they threw them was a plain stick or piece of wood 2½ or 3 feet in length, at one end of which was a small knob or hook, and near the other a kind of cross-piece



to hinder it from slipping out of their hands. With this contrivance, simple as it is, and ill-fitted for that purpose, they throw the lances forty yards or more with a swiftness and steadiness truly surprising. The knob being hooked into a small dent made in the top of the lance, they hold it over their shoulder, and shaking it an instant, as if balancing it, throw it with the greatest ease imaginable. The neatest of these throwing sticks that we saw was made of a hard reddish wood, polished and shining: the sides were flat. and about two inches in breadth, and the handle, or part to keep it from dropping out of the hand, covered with thin layers of very white polished bone. These I believe to be the things which many of our people were deceived by, imagining them to be wooden swords, clubs, etc., according to the direction in which they happened to see them. Defensive weapons we saw only in Sting-ray's Bay and there only a single instance: a man who attempted to oppose our landing came down to the beach with a shield of an oblong shape about 3 feet long and 1½ broad, made of the bark of a tree. This he left behind when he ran away, and we found upon taking it up that it had plainly been pierced through with a single-pointed lance near the centre. That such shields were frequently used in that neighbourhood we had, however, sufficient proof, often seeing upon trees the places from whence they had been cut, and sometimes the shields themselves cut out but not yet taken from the tree, the edges of the bark only being a little raised with wedges. This shows that these people certainly know how much thicker and stronger bark becomes by being suffered to remain upon the tree some time after it is cut round.