Having, in the last chapter, examined the instruments used by man, we have next to look at the arts by which he maintains and protects himself. His first need is to get his daily food. In tropical forests, savages may easily live on what nature provides, like the Andaman Islanders, who gather fruits and honey, hunt wild pigs in the jungle, and take turtle and fish on the coast. Many forest tribes of Brazil, though they cultivate a little, depend mostly on wild food. Of such the rude man has no lack, for there is game in plenty and the rivers swarm with fish, while the woods yield him a supply of roots and bulbs, calabashes, palm-nuts, beans, and many other fruits; he collects wild honey, birds’ eggs, grubs out of rotten wood, nor does he despise insects, even ants. In less fertile lands savage life goes on well while game and fish abound, but when these fail it becomes an unceasing quest for food, as where the Australians roam over their deserts on the look-out for every eatable root or insect, or the low Rocky Mountain tribes gather pine-nuts and berries, catch snakes, and drag lizards out of their holes with a hooked stick. The Fuegians wander along their bleak inhospitable shores feeding mostly on shellfish, so that in the course of ages their shells, with fish-bones and other rubbish, have formed long banks above high-water mark. Such shell-heaps or “kitchen-middens” are found here and there all round the coasts of the world, marking the old resorts of such tribes; for instance on the coast of Denmark, where archæologists search them for relics of rude Europeans, who, in the Stone age, led a life somewhat like that of Tierra del Fuego. Hunting and fishing go on through all levels of society, beginning with the savages who have no other means of subsistence, till at last among civilized nations game and fish hardly do more than supplement the more regular supplies of grain and meat from the farm. Looking at the devices of the hunter and fisher, it will be seen how thoroughly most of them belong to the ruder stages of culture.
The natives of the Brazilian forests, to whom tracking game is the chief business of life, do it with a skill that fills with wonder the white men who have watched them. The Botocudo hunter, gliding stealthily through the underwood, knows every habit and sign of bird and beast; the remains of berries and pods show him what creature has fed there; he knows how high up an armadillo displaces the leaves in passing, and so can distinguish its track from the snake’s or tortoise’s, and follow it to its burrow by the scratches of its scaly armour on the mud. Even the sense of smell of this savage hunter is keen enough to help him in tracking. Hidden behind the trunk of a tree, he can imitate the cries of birds and beasts to bring them within range of his deadly poisoned arrow, and he will even entice the alligator by making her rough eggs grate together where they lie under leaves on the river-bank. If an ape he has shot high in the boughs of some immense tree remains hanging by its tail, he will go up after it by a hanging creeper where no white man would climb. At last, laden with game and useful forest things, such as palm-fibre to make hammocks, or fruit to brew liquor, he finds his way back to his hut by the sun and the lie of the ground, and the twigs that he bent back for way-marks as he crept through the thicket. In Australia, the native hunter will lie in wait behind a screen of boughs near a water-hole till the kangaroos come to drink, or will track one in the open for days, camping by his little fire at night to be ready for the pursuit again at dawn, keeping unseen and to the leeward till at last he can creep near enough to hurl his spear, seldom in vain. When the natives hunt together, they will put up brush-fence in two long wings converging towards a pit, and so drive the kangaroos into it; or they will form a great hunting party for a battue, surrounding half a mile of bush-land, and with shouts and clatter of weapons driving all the game to the centre where they can close round and despatch them with spears and waddies. In fowling the Australians show equal expertness. A native will swim under water breathing through a reed, or will merely cover his head with water-weed till he gets among a flock of ducks, which one by one he noiselessly pulls under and tucks into his belt. This shows in a simple form a kind of duck-hunting which is found in such distant parts of the world, that travellers have been puzzled to guess whether the idea spread from one tribe to another, or was invented many times. It may be seen on the Nile, where a harmless-looking calabash floats in among the water-fowl, with a swimming Egyptian’s head inside. The Australian hunter takes the wallaby (a small kangaroo) by fastening to a long rod like a fishing-rod a hawk’s skin and feathers, making the sham bird hover with its proper cry till it drives the game into a bush where it can be speared. Of devices of stalking with an imitated animal, one of the most perfect is that of the Dogrib Indians, when a pair of hunters go after reindeer; the foremost carries a reindeer’s head, while in the other hand he has a bunch of twigs against which he makes the head rub its horns in a lifelike way, and the two men, walking as the deer’s fore and hind legs, get among the herd and bring down the finest. In England, till of late years, fowlers used to hide behind a wooden horse moved along on wheels, and a relic of this survives in the phrase “to make a stalking-horse of one,” often now used by people who have no idea what the word meant.
Hunting with dogs was very ancient, and was found among uncivilized tribes; thus the Australians seem to have trained the dingo or native dog for the chase, and most of the North American Indians had their native hunting-dogs. Still dogs were not so universal among rude tribes as they have been since European breeds were carried all over the world; for instance, the natives of Newfoundland seem to have had no dogs. The largest and fiercest animal whose instinct of prey man has thus taken advantage of is the hunting-leopard or cheetah, which in India or Persia is carried in an iron cage to the field and let loose upon the deer; when it has pounced on the game the huntsman draws it off with the taste of blood and gives it a leg for its share in the partnership. Already in classic times there is mention of birds of prey trained to strike game-birds or drive them into the net, or to pounce on hares. Hawking or falconry reached its height as a royal sport in mediæval Tartary, where Marco Polo describes the Great Khan going out, borne by two elephants in his litter hung with cloth of gold and covered with lion-skins, to see the sport of his ten thousand falconers flying their hawks at the pheasants and cranes. From the East hawking spread over Europe. It was familiar to our early English ancestors, and if one had to paint a symbolic picture of the middle ages, one could hardly choose more characteristic figures than the knight and lady riding out with their hooded hawks on their fists. Since then falconry has all but died out in Europe, and nowadays the traveller may best see it in the Asiatic district where it first came up, Persia or the neighbouring countries. In such sports the quest of food (now often contemptuously called “pot-hunting”) becomes subordinate to the excitement of the chase. It was so especially where fleet animals like the deer were hunted on horseback, till at last the royal stag-hunt became a court ceremony with its cavalcades and its great officers of state in splendid uniforms. Such pageantry is, indeed, declining in modern Europe, but the place it used to hold in English court life is shown by noblemen still occupying in the Royal household the places of Master of the Buckhounds and Hereditary Grand Falconer.
The modern hunter has a vastly increased power of killing game, from the use of fire-arms instead of the bow and spear which came down from savage times. The effect of bringing in guns is seen among the native American buffalo-hunters. They were always reckless in destruction when they once came within reach of the herds, but now with the help of the white man and the use of his rifles there is such slaughter that travellers have found the ground and air for miles foul with the carcases of buffalo killed merely for the hides and tongues. In the civilized world, what with killing off game, and what with the encroachment of agriculture on the wild lands, both the supply and the need of game for man’s subsistence have much lessened. But the hunter’s life has been from the earliest times man’s school of endurance and courage, where success and even trial gives pleasure in one of its intensest forms. Thus it has come to be kept up artificially where its practical use has fallen away. In civilized countries it is seen at its best where it keeps closest to barbaric fatigue and danger, like grouse-shooting in Scotland, or boar-hunting in Austria, but at its meanest, where it has come down to shooting grain-fed pheasants as tame as barn-door fowls.
Next, as to trapping game. This was seen in a curiously simple form in Australia, where a native would lie on his back on a rock in the sunshine with a bit of fish in his hand, pretending to be fast asleep, till some hawk or crow pounced on the bait, only to be itself pounced on by the hungry man, who broiled and ate it then and there. A plan of taking game which must have readily suggested itself to rude hunters was the pitfall, in its simplest shape a mere hole too deep for a heavy beast to get out of when it has fallen in. The savage trapper will dig such a pit, and cover it with brushwood or sods, as in Africa the bushmen take the huge hippopotamus and elephant, while in fur-countries the hunters arrange their pitfalls in various ways, the most artificial plan being to cover them with a wooden floor which upsets when trodden on. The word trap, meaning originally step (like German treppe), may have come from its usually being some contrivance for the game to tread on. It is so not only with the pitfall, but with other common kinds of trap, which, when the animal steps on the catch, drop down on it, or pull a noose round it, or let fly a dart at it, all which are plans known in the uncivilized world. The art of catching birds and beasts with a noose, held in the hand or fastened to the end of a stick, is universal. Perhaps the most skilful noosing is that done on horseback by the herdsmen of Mexico, though it should be noticed that their lazo is not a native American invention; it was brought over by the Spaniards with its name, which is simply Latin laqueus, a rope. To use the noose for trapping purposes, it is only necessary to set it in the track where game pass, for them to run their heads into, as the North American Indians do. But the noose may also be attached to a bough bent back so as to spring up when an animal touches it, and catch him. Or a spear may be arranged as the savages of the Malay Peninsula do it, with an elastic bamboo so bent back that when released by the animal it will spear him. The suggestion has been already mentioned ([p. 195]) that such a spring-trap first led to the invention of the bow and arrow. Actual bows and arrows are set as traps in such countries as Siberia, and the spring-gun is a modern improvement on these.
Lastly, the net is one of the things known to almost all men so far as history can tell. The native Australians net game like ancient Assyrians or English poachers, and are not less skilled in netting wild fowl. To see this art at its height we may look at the pictures of fowling scenes on the monuments of ancient Egypt, which show the great clap-nets taking geese by scores; even the souls of the dead are depicted rejoicing in this favourite sport in the world beyond the tomb.
Among the various arts of the fisherman, one common among rude tribes was easily hit upon. Every day at the turn of the tide at river-mouths and on low shores, and inland near streams after a flood, fish are left behind in the shallow pools. Led by this experience, the savage has wit enough to assist nature, as where the Fuegians put up stake fences on the coast at low-water mark, while in South Africa near the rivers large flats are walled in with loose stones ready for the floods. Thus our fish-weirs and fish-dams are no novelties in civilization. Nor is the device of drugging or narcotizing fish a civilized invention, but to be seen in perfection among the tropical forest-tribes of South America, who use for the purpose a score or so of different plants. There is nothing surprising, however, in its being known to men so rude, for it must often occur by accident, from the branches or fruit of the right kind of euphorbia or paullinia falling into some forest pool, an experiment which the observant native would not be slow to try again. Next, a mode of fishing usual among savages, is spearing, the spear for this being barbed, and often made more effective by the head spreading into several barbed prongs. An account of a native Australian fishing describes him lying athwart his bark canoe, with his spear-point dipping into the water ready to go down without splashing, and what is more remarkable, the fisherman keeping his own eyes under water, so that not only the ripple does not disturb his view, but his aim is not interfered with by the refraction of light which makes it so difficult for a man out of the water to hit an object below the surface. The wilder races also know well how after dark fish come to a light, so that salmon-spearing by torchlight, now that it is no longer so frequent in Scotland or Norway, may be seen in all its picturesqueness among the Indians of Vancouver’s Island. Shooting fish with the bow and arrow, which many low tribes do with wonderful dexterity, may be counted as a variety of fish-spearing. The fish-hook is a contrivance not known to all savage tribes, but some have it, as the Australians who cut their hooks out of shell, and are even known to fish with a hawk’s claw attached to a line. The ancient Egyptian would sit like a modern European angler by a canal or pond, fishing with rod and line; his hook was of bronze. Only fly-fishing seems not to have been known in ancient times. On the whole it is remarkable how little modern fishermen have moved from the methods of the rudest and oldest men. The savage fish-spear, with its three or four barbed prongs, is curiously like that our sailors still use, and call a fish-gig. Only we make the head of iron, not of wood and fish-teeth. So it is with the harpoon used by American whalers, with its loosely fitting point which comes off when the fish is struck, only remaining attached by a long cord to the floating shaft; this is copied, but with a steel point, from the bone-headed harpoon of the Aleutian Islanders. Our fishermen carry on their business on a large scale, with their steam-trawlers and seines which sweep a whole bay, but their net-fishing is much of the same kinds as may be found among the peoples from whom we have here taken our early examples of spearing and angling.
Thus man, even while he feeds himself as the lower animals do, by gathering wild fruit and catching game and fish, is led by his higher intelligence to more artificial means of getting these. Rising to the next stage, he begins to grow supplies of food for himself. Agriculture is not to be looked on as a difficult or out-of-the-way invention, for the rudest savage, skilled as he is in the habits of the food-plants he gathers, must know well enough that if seeds or roots are put in a proper place in the ground they will grow. Thus it is hardly through ignorance, but rather from roving life, bad climate, or sheer idleness, that so many tribes gather what nature gives, but plant nothing. Even very rude people, when they live on one spot all the year round, and the climate and soil are favourable, mostly plant a little, like the Indians of Brazil, who clear a patch of forest round their huts to grow a supply of maize, cassava, bananas, and cotton. When we look at the food-plants of the world, it appears that some few are grown much as in their wild state, like the coco-nut and bread-fruit, but most are altered by cultivation. Sometimes it is possible to find the wild plant and show how man has improved it, as where the wild potato is found growing on the cliffs of Chile. But the origin of many cultivated plants is lost to tradition and has become a subject for tale-tellers. This is the case with those edible grasses which have been raised by cultivation into the cereals, such as wheat, barley, rye, and by their regular and plentiful supply have become the mainstay of human life and the great moving power of civilization. It is clear that the development of these grain-plants from their wild state was before the earliest ages of history, which throws back the beginnings of agriculture to times older still. How ancient was the first tilling of the soil, is shown by ancient Egypt and Babylonia, with their governments and armies, temples and palaces, for it could have been only through carrying on agriculture for a long series of ages that such populations could have grown up so closely packed together as to form a civilized nation. Plants, when once brought into cultivation, make their way from people to people across the globe. Thus the European conquerors of America carried back the maize or Indian corn which had been cultivated from unknown antiquity over the New World, and which now furnishes the Italian peasant with his daily meal of polenta or porridge; it is grown even in Japan, and down to the south of Africa, where it is the “mealies” of the colonist. An English vegetable garden is a curious study for the botanist who assigns to each plant its proper home, and to the philologist who traces its name. Sometimes this tells its story fairly, as where damson and peach describe these fruits as brought from Damascus and Persia. But the potato, brought over in Queen Elizabeth’s time, seems to have borrowed the name of another plant botanically different, the batata, or sweet-potato. The luscious tropical ananas has lost its native Malay name except among botanists, and has taken the name of the common fir-cone or pine-apple, which in shape it so closely resembles.
Fig. 64.—a, Australian digging-stick; b, Swedish wooden hack.