The bows are about five feet in length, and are furnished with a string sometimes made of bamboo and sometimes of rattan. The arrows are about four feet in length, and made of cane or reed, to the end of which is attached a piece of hard wood, generally that of the betel-tree. The tips are mostly simple, the wood being scraped to a sharp point and hardened in the fire, but the more ambitious weapons are armed with barbs, and furnished with a point made of bone. The teeth of the sawfish are often employed for this purpose, and a few of the arrows are tipped with the kangaroo claw, as already mentioned in the description of the Dourga Strait spear. Beside these weapons, the natives carry a sort of axe made of stone lashed to a wooden handle, but this ought rather to be considered as a tool than a weapon, although it can be used in the latter capacity. With this simple instrument the Outanatas cut down the trees, shape them into canoes, and perform the various pieces of carpentering that are required in architecture. The most remarkable part of an Outanata’s equipment is an instrument which greatly perplexed the earlier voyagers, and led them to believe that these natives were acquainted with fire-arms. Captain Cook, who visited New Guinea in 1770, mentions that as soon as he reached the shore and had left his boat, three natives, or “Indians,” as he calls them, rushed out of the wood, and that one of them threw out of his hand something which “flew on one side of him and burnt exactly like powder, but made no report.” The two others hurled their spears at the travellers, who were in self-defence obliged to use their fire-arms. Not wishing to come to an engagement, they retired to the boat, and reached it just in time, the natives appearing in considerable force. “As soon as we were aboard, we rowed abreast of them, and their number then appeared to be between sixty and a hundred. We took a view of them at our leisure. They made much the same appearance as the New Hollanders, being nearly of the same stature, and having their hair short-cropped. Like them they also were all stark naked, but we thought the color of their skin was not quite so dark; this, however, might be merely the effect of their being not quite so dirty. “All this time they were shouting defiance, and letting off their fires by four or five at a time. What those fires were, or for what purpose intended, we could not imagine. Those who discharged them had in their hands a short piece of stick--possibly a hollow cane--which they swung sideways from them, and we immediately saw fire and smoke, exactly resembling those of a musket, and of no longer duration. This wonderful phenomenon was observed from the ship, and the deception was so great that the people on board thought they had firearms; and in the boat, if we had not been so near that we must have heard the report, we should have thought they had been firing volleys.”