Chapter 18 - A Narrative of Hunting Adventures in Southern Africa by Mayne Reid
The Arrow-Poison
Klaas and Jan had long since ridden their ponies back to camp, and having off-saddled, remained by the wagons.
For all that they were not idle—that is, they were not without something to interest and amuse them. Swartboy was the genius worshipped by Klaas and Jan, for there was no bird in all Africa that Swartboy could not either snare or trap; and in his hours of leisure, when the oxen were kraaled and off his hands, he was in the habit of showing the two young “mynheers” how to construct many a sort of decoy and trap for the fowls of the air.
Upon this day in particular, however, they were more than usually interested in the Bushman’s proceedings, as his attention was turned to capturing,—not a fowl of the air, but of the earth,—an ostrich.
Swartboy had resolved to pluck the plumes out of the old cock that had been seen, and whose dwelling had been so rudely approached and plundered in the morning.
But how was Swartboy to capture the cock?
It was not his intention to take him alive. That is a difficult matter, and can only be managed by men mounted upon fleet horses, and then after a very long and troublesome chase.
Swartboy had no wish to take the ostrich alive. The bird would be of no use to him in that way, as the skin and plume-feathers were the spoils upon which the Bushman’s thoughts were bent, or rather the rix-dollars which these would yield on Swartboy’s return to Graaf Reinet. Therefore he did not intend to catch the old cock, but kill him, if he could.
But how was the Bushman to accomplish this? Would he borrow the rifle from Hendrik, or the great elephant-gun—the “roer”—from Groot Willem, and shoot the ostrich? Not likely. Swartboy was no shot, that is, with fire-arms. He knew nothing about them; and with either rifle or roer he could scarcely have hit an elephant, much less an ostrich!
But if Swartboy knew not how to manage a gun, he had a weapon of his own that he did know how to manage,—his bow. With that tiny bow,—scarce a yard in length,—and those small slender arrows, the Bushman could send a missile as deadly as the leaden bullet of either rifle or roer.
Looking at the light reed, with its little barbed head and feathered shaft, you would scarcely believe it possible that such a weapon could bring down the big strong ostrich; and yet with a similar shaft had Swartboy often levelled the great camelopard in the dust. A deadly and dangerous weapon was the Bushman’s arrow.
But what rendered it so? Not its size, and surely not the force with which it could be projected from that tiny bow? Neither. There was something besides the strength of the bow and the weight of the arrow to make it a “deadly and dangerous weapon.” There was poison.
Swartboy’s arrows were true Bushman weapons,—they were poisoned. No wonder they were deadly.
The use of the bow among savage nations all over the earth, and the great similarity of its form and construction everywhere, may be regarded as one of the most curious facts in the history of our race. Tribes and nations that appear to have been isolated beyond all possible communication with the rest of the world, are found in possession of this universal weapon, constructed on the same principle, and only differing slightly in details—these details usually having reference to surrounding circumstances. When all else between two tribes or nations of savages may differ, both will be found carrying a common instrument of destruction,—the bow and arrows.
Can it be mere coincidence, like necessities in different parts of the world producing like results, or is this possession of a similar weapon among distant and remote peoples a proof of unity or communication between them in early times?
These inquiries would lead to a long train of reflections, which, however interesting, would here be out of place.
But an equally or still more curious fact is that of poisoned arrows. We find here and there, in almost every quarter of the globe, tribes of savages who poison their arrows; and the mode of preparing and using this poison is almost exactly the same among all of them. Where there is a difference, it arises from the different circumstances by which the tribe may be surrounded.
Now the knowledge of arrow-poison, as well as the mode of preparing it and the habit of using it, belong to tribes of savages so completely isolated, that it is not probable—hardly possible, in fact—that either they or their ancestors could ever have communicated it to one another. We cannot believe that there ever existed intercourse between the Bushman of Africa and the Chuncho of the Amazon, much less between the former and the forest tribes of North America; yet all these use the arrow-poison and prepare it in a similar manner! All make it by a mixture of vegetable poison with the subtle fluid extracted from the fang-glands of venomous serpents. In North America, the rattlesnake and moccason, with several species of roots, furnish the material; in South America, the “wourali,” or “curare,” as it is indifferently called, is a mixture of a vegetable juice with the poison extracted from the glands of the coral-snake, (Echidna ocellata), the “boiquira” or “diamond rattlesnake,” (Crotalus horridus), the lance-headed “viper,” (Trigonocephalus lanceolate) the formidable “bushmaster,” (Lachesis rhombeata), and several other species. In South Africa, a similar result is obtained by mixing the fluid from the poison-glands of the puff-adder, or that of various species of naja, the “cobras” of that country, with the juice from the root of an Amaryllis, called gift-bol (poison-bulb) in the phraseology of the colonial Dutch. It is out of such elements that the Bushman mixes his dangerous compound.
Now our Bushman, Swartboy, understood the process as well as any of his race; and it was in watching him mixing the ingredients and poisoning his arrows that Klaas and Jan spent the early portion of that day.
All the ingredients he carried with him; for whenever a “geel coppel,” (Naja haje), or a “spuugh-slang,” (Naja nigra), or the “puff-adder,” (Vipera arretans), or the horned viper, (Cerastes caudalis,)—whenever any of these was killed on the route—and many were—Swartboy took care to open the poison-gland, situated behind their fangs, and take therefrom the drop of venom, which he carefully preserved in a small phial. He also carried another ingredient, a species of bitumen obtained from certain caverns, where it exudes from the rocks. The object of this is not, as supposed by some travellers, to render the charm “more potent,” but simply to make it glutinous, so that it would stick securely to the barb of the arrow, and not brush off too easily. A similar result is obtained by the South American Indians from a vegetable gum.
The gift-bol, or poison-bulb, was easily obtained, as the species of Amaryllis that yields it grew plentifully near. But Swartboy had not trusted to this chance, as during past days he had plucked several of the roots, and put them away in one of the side-chests of the wagon, where many other little knick-knacks of his lay snugly stowed.
Klaas and Jan, therefore, had the rare chance of witnessing the manufacture of the celebrated arrow-poison.
They saw Swartboy bruise the gift-bol, and simmer it over the fire in a small tin pan which he had; they saw him drop in the precious snake-venom; they saw him stir it round, until it became of a very dark colour, and then, to their great astonishment, they saw him try its strength by tasting!
This seemed odd to both, and so may it to you, boy reader,—that a drop of poison, the smallest portion of which would have killed Swartboy as dead as a herring, could be thus swallowed by him with impunity! But you are to remember that poisons, both vegetable and mineral, are very different in their nature. A small quantity of arsenic taken into the stomach will produce death, and yet you might swallow the head of a rattlesnake, fangs, poison-gland, and all, without the slightest danger.
On the contrary, if a single grain of the latter were to enter your blood, even if it were only scratched in with a pin, its effects would be fatal, while other poisons may be introduced into the blood without any fatal result.
Swartboy knew there was no arsenic or any species of “stomach-poison,” if I am allowed to use such a phrase, in his mixture. It was only “blood-poison,” which he might taste with impunity.
The bitumen was the last thing put into the pan; and when Swartboy had stirred it a while longer, and sufficiently thickened it, so that it would adhere to the barbs, he took down a quiver of arrows already made, and dipped each of them into the poison. As soon as the barbs had cooled, and the poison became well dried, the arrows were ready for use, and Swartboy intended that some of them should be used on that very day. Before the sun should set, he designed sending one or more of them through the skin of an ostrich.