The wood is singularly inelastic. The arrows
(of which I have obtained a number) are very peculiar, and are made
in three pieces, the point consisting of a sharpened piece of bone
with an elongated cavity on one side for the reception of the
poison. This point or head is very slightly fastened by a lashing
of bark to a fusiform piece of bone about four inches long, which
is in its turn lashed to a shaft about fourteen inches long, the
other end of which is sometimes equipped with a triple feather and
sometimes is not.
The poison is placed in the elongated cavity in the head in a very
soft state, and hardens afterwards. In some of the arrow-heads
fully half a teaspoonful of the paste is inserted. From the nature
of the very slight lashings which attach the arrow-head to the
shaft, it constantly remains fixed in the slight wound that it
makes, while the shaft falls off.
Pipichari has given me a small quantity of the poisonous paste, and
has also taken me to see the plant from the root of which it is
made, the Aconitum Japonicum, a monkshood, whose tall spikes of
blue flowers are brightening the brushwood in all directions. The
root is pounded into a pulp, mixed with a reddish earth like an
iron ore pulverised, and again with animal fat, before being placed
in the arrow. It has been said that the poison is prepared for use
by being buried in the earth, but Benri says that this is needless.
They claim for it that a single wound kills a bear in ten minutes,
but that the flesh is not rendered unfit for eating, though they
take the precaution of cutting away a considerable quantity of it
round the wound.
Dr. Eldridge, formerly of Hakodate, obtained a small quantity of
the poison, and, after trying some experiments with it, came to the
conclusion that it is less virulent than other poisons employed for
a like purpose, as by the natives of Java, the Bushmen, and certain
tribes of the Amazon and Orinoco. The Ainos say that if a man is
accidentally wounded by a poisoned arrow the only cure is immediate
excision of the part.
I do not wonder that the Government has prohibited arrow-traps, for
they made locomotion unsafe, and it is still unsafe a little
farther north, where the hunters are more out of observation than
here. The traps consist of a large bow with a poisoned arrow,
fixed in such a way that when the bear walks over a cord which is
attached to it he is simultaneously transfixed. I have seen as
many as fifty in one house.
