Ingenious Islands

Tools.

How Necessity Mothered Invention.

By “C. Coral.”

IN the days when files and knives and other European tools were inacces sible to the natives, they made shift with home-made implements which did the work successfully and, in some cases, even, with a high degree of perfection.

In the islands of Torres Strait, native tools consisted of stone tomahawks, cut ting tools made of boar tusks, rasps and files formed of stingray skin, and so on.

The stone axe, commonly termed “Panigob,” varied in shape, from the form akin to the ordinary axe-head, to an implement made with triangular ends (called “Daumer-upi,” owing to its resemblance to the tail of a pigeon), which was set into a handle and lashed with cane or coconut-fibre rope. In use, it served for garden work, cutting the bush, etc., and also for shaping up wood.

One variety of axe was made from the large clam shell; another was formed of granite or suitable stone obtained from the mainland. Some very fine specimens of these exist. For trimming up the long dugong-spears (made of a special kind of wood), the sharpened end of a wild boar’s tusk made an excellent “spoke shave,” and was useful in a good deal of other woodwork.

The skin of a stingray, carefully dried, and attached to a piece of half-round wood, served as a rasp in shaping canoes, etc.; the rough, spikey surface of the skin has a wonderfully file-like effect, and the finer variety of skin pro duced a smooth surface, which in due course, was finished off with the leaf of a tree which served instead of sand paper. Even now, many of these sting ray-skin “rasps” may be found in use.

When it came to boring wood for suit able-sized holes, through which to pass rope, and so on, the horny toe of the cassowary made a good substitute for brace-and-bit. These were obtained from New Guinea; but, failing cassowary bone “bits,” the old method of producing holes by means of fire was resorted to.

The advent of the white-man ship, with its store of iron and steel tools, and copper nails, naturally brought about a great change in Islands carpentry equip ment: and natives were always ready to barter stuff for “Tulik,” as they termed anything in the way of iron. So that even old pieces of hoop-iron, cut into lengths, found ready exchange for marine produce in the early days, just as empty bottles were found also to be a valuable commodity, both for decora tive purposes and also because of the many uses to which a piece of broken glass might be put. It is recorded that one early trading vessel had empty bottles as the major portion of her cargo.

The native now, however, reviewing the past,, exclaims: —“We all same proper fool them time —all that stuff we pay for one old bottle!”