[122] This meaningless word (cartuccia, a scrap of paper) was applied by Champollion to the elliptical oval containing a group of hieroglyphics. It is simply an Egyptian shield (Wilkinson, loc. cit. i. chap. 5), and the horizontal line below shows the ground upon which it rested. The old Nile-dwellers, like the classics of Europe and the modern Chinese, use the shield for their characteristics, their heraldic badges, &c. The same was the case with our formal heraldry, which originated about the time of the Crusades, personal symbolism being its base. As Mr. Hardwick shows, the horse, raven, and dragon were old familiar badges; many of our sheep-marks are identical with ‘ordinaries,’ and the tribes of Australia used signs to serve as kobongs, or crests. Thus, too, in fortification the shield became the crenelle and the battlement, and it served to ‘iron-clad’ the war-galleys of the piratical Norsemen.
[123] So there are two ways of swimming. The civilised man imitates the action of the frog, the savage the dog, throwing out the arms and drawing the hands towards his chest.
[124] Journ. Anthrop. Inst. vol. iii. pp. 7–29, April, 1873.
[125] An illustration is given in Mr. J. G. Wood’s Natural History of Man. He also quotes Mr. F. Baines, who describes the paddles of the North Australians with barbed and pointed looms.
[126] Capt. James Mackenzie, in a paper read before the Ethno. Soc. by Mr. G. M. Atkinson (Journal, vol. ii. No. 2, of July 18, 1870. The paddle is figured pl. xiv. 2).
[127] Translated for the Hakluyt Society (1874) by Mr. Albert Tootal, of Rio de Janeiro, who wisely preserved the plain and simple style of the unlettered and superstition-haunted gunner.
[128] In Bacon’s day (Aphorisms, book ii.) gummy woods were supposed to be rather a Northern growth, ‘more pitchy and resinous than in warm climates, as the fir, pine, and the like.’ They are as abundant near the Equator, where the viscidity preserves them from the alternate action of burning suns and torrential rains; moreover, they are harder and heavier than the pines and firs of the Temperates.
[129] Historia Geral do Brazil, by F. Adolpho de Varnhagen, vol. i. p. 112 (Laemmert, Rio de Janeiro, 1854).
[130] M. Paul Bataillard (p. 409, Sur le Mot Pagaie, Soc. Anthrop. de Paris, 1874) is in error, both when he calls the people of Paraguay ‘Pagayas,’ or ‘carriers of lances,’ and when he identifies Pagaya (not a spear, but a paddle-sword) with the ‘sagaia or assagai.’ The latter word is of disputed origin, and it is meaningless in the tongues of South Africa. Space forbids me to touch its history, except superficially. ‘Azagay,’ a lance, or rather javelin, appears in Spanish history as far back as the days of Ojeda (1509); and in 1497 the Portuguese of Vasco da Gama’s expedition use the term ‘azagayas’ (p. 12, Roteiro or Ruttier, before alluded to). I believe both to be derived from the Arabic el-khazúk, a spit—in fact, the Italian spiedo, lance.
[131] Markham (p. 203, Cieça de Leon) makes ‘Macaná’ a Quichua word; it also belongs to the great Tupi-Guarani family.