A method of hafting, which implies fixity of residence, is said to have been in use among the Caribs[523] of Guadaloupe. The blade of the axe had a groove round it at the butt-end, and a deep hole having been cut in the branch of a growing tree, this end of the blade was placed in it, and as the branch grew became firmly embedded in it, the wood which grasped it having formed a collar that filled the groove. The Hurons[524] are said to have adopted the same plan. [Illustration: Fig. 94.—Axe from the Rio Frio. 1∕6] I have engraved in Fig. 94, an extremely rude example of hafting by fitting the blade into a socket, from an original kindly lent me by the late Mr. Thomas Belt, F.G.S., who procured it among the Indians of the Rio Frio, a tributary of the San Juan del Norte in Nicaragua. The blade is of trachyte entirely unground and most rudely chipped. The club-like haft is formed of some endogenous wood, and has evidently been chopped into shape by means of stone tools. [Illustration: Fig. 95.—War-axe—Gaveoë Indians, Brazil.] In these instances Clavigero’s[525] remark with regard to the copper |156| or bronze axes of the Mexicans holds good; they are like “those of modern times, except that we put the handle in an eye of the axe while they put the axe in an eye of the handle.” A similarly hafted hatchet with the blade ground is in use among the Botocudo Indians. In the Island of New Hanover[526] the axe blade is inserted about the middle of the club-like haft. Some hatchets from the Admiralty Islands[527] are curiously like those from the Swiss |157| Lake-dwellings. Excessively long hafts in which the blades are let into a socket are occasionally in use among the Chamacocos[528] of south-east Bolivia. Many stone and metallic axes in use among other modern savages are hafted in much the same manner by insertion in a socket. In some instances it would appear as if the hole for receiving the stone did not extend through the haft, but was merely a shallow depression—even a notch. Such seems to be the case with a war-axe of the Gaveoë Indians of Brazil in the British Museum, figured in the _Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries_,[529] and here, by permission, reproduced, as Fig. 95. Some of their axes have longer hafts. In the Over Yssel Museum is a Brazilian stone axe with a blade of this kind, which is said to have been used in an insurrection at Deventer[530] in 1787. [Illustration: Fig. 96.—Axe of Montezuma II.] The “securis lapidea in sacrificiis Indorum usitata,” engraved by Aldrovandus,[531] seems to have the blade inserted in a socket without being tied, but in most axes of the same kind the blade is secured in its place by a plaited binding artistically interlaced. The stone axe said to be that of Montezuma II., preserved in the Ambras Museum at Vienna, is a good example of the kind.[532] I have engraved it as Fig. 96, from a sketch I made in 1866.