The
animals, including insects in tubes, filled nearly two kegs and three
bottles, and I had two small cases of stuffed birds, the handiwork of Mr.
Dawson.
Of stone-implements I was lucky enough to secure thirty-six, and made over
four of them to my friend Professor Prestwich. They are found everywhere
throughout the country, but I saw no place of manufacture except those
noted near Axim. Mr. Sam, of Tumento, promised to forward many others to
England. The native women search for and find them not only near the beds
of streams, but also about the alluvial diggings. Nearly all are shaped
like the iron axe or adze of Urua, in Central Africa, a long narrow blade
with rounded top and wedge-shaped edge. This tool is either used in the
hand like a chisel, or inserted into a conical hole burnt through a
tree-branch, and the shape of the aperture makes every blow tighten the
hold. The people mount it in two ways, either as an axe in line with, or
as an adze at a right angle to, the helve.
At Akankon I obtained from Mr. Amondsen a stone-implement of novel shape,
not seen by me elsewhere. A bit of the usual close-grained trap had been
cut into a parallelopiped seven and a half inches long with a flat head
one inch and a half in diameter and a bevel-edge of two inches and
one-third along the slope.
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