But while mentioning Humboldt's argument, it must also be said that he had not had an opportunity of learning how these ornaments were made. Mr. Wallace has since found that at least plain cylinders of imperfect rock crystal, four to eight inches long, and one inch in diameter, are made and perforated by very low tribes on the Rio Negro. They are not, as Humboldt seems to have supposed, the result of high mechanical skill, but merely of the most simple and savage processes, carried on with that utter disregard of time that lets the Indian spend a month in making an arrow. They are merely ground down into shape by rubbing, and the perforating of the cylinders, crosswise or even lengthwise, is said to be done thus: a pointed flexible leaf-shoot of wild plantain is twirled with the hands against the hard stone, till, with the aid of fine sand and water, it bores into and through it, and this is said to take years to do. Such cylinders as the chiefs wear are said sometimes to take two men's lives to perforate.[1] The stone is brought from a great distance up the river, and is very highly valued. It is, of course, not necessary to suppose that these rude Indians came of themselves to making such ornaments; they may have imitated things made by races in a higher state of culture; but the evidence, as it now stands, does not go for much in proving that the tribes of the Rio Negro have themselves fallen from a higher level.
On the other hand, it is much easier to go on pointing out arts practised by the less civilized races, which seem to have their fitting place rather in a history of progress than of degeneration. This remark applies to the case just mentioned, of the intermediate forms between the boomerang and the war-club being found in Australia, as though to mark the stages through which the perfect instrument had been developed. Several such cases occur among the arts of fire-making and cooking described in the following chapters. To glance for a moment at the history of Textile Fabrics (into which I hope to
- ↑ Wallace, p. 278. See Ran, 'Drilling in Stone without Metal,' in Smithsonian Report, 1868.
is more easily worked when fresh from the ground, than after its water has evaporated.
