METHODS OF TRANSPORT Ami Wheeled Vehicle Resembling Models found in Early Cyprian Tombs—Boat-building and the Art of Navigation on the Decline. This subject might be dismissed with a word—so little is any method of transport less primitive than that of human shoulders developed among the aboriginal tribes—were it not for two facts which raise interesting questions. One of these has to do with land transport; the other with transport by water. Regarding the former, the only tribe that uses any sort of wheeled vehicle, or that knows anything of a beast of draught, is the Ami. The vehicle of this tribe is a primitive two-wheeled cart, the interesting point about it being that the solid wheels are fixed to the axle, the latter revolving with each revolution of the wheels. In fact, the construction of the cart causes it to resemble an enormous harrow rather than any vehicle usually associated with transport. The Ami tribes-people, however, are inordinately proud of this invention, which they say was introduced among them by the “White Fathers” (evidently the Dutch) of the “glorious long ago.” This cart is The question of interest in connection with this vehicle is whether or not the Dutch of the seventeenth century used carts of so primitive a type as that now in use among the Ami. Is it not more probable that when the carts introduced by the Dutch fell into decay, the Ami, in their attempts at imitation of the original model, unconsciously reproduced a form of vehicle used by man at the “dawn of history?” Needless to say, the Ami cart produces a painful creaking, and a sound that can be compared only to a series of groans when it is drawn over the rough roads of the east coast. This, however, apparently adds to its attractiveness in the eyes of its owners. Whether or not the present-day cart represents the degeneration of a more highly evolved type of vehicle once known to the Ami would be difficult to assert with positiveness. As regards water Of all the aboriginal tribes, the most skilful boat-builders are the Yami, of Botel Tobago. Their boats, like their pottery, resemble more those of the Papuans of the Solomon Islands than they do those of the other Formosan tribes—this both in mode of construction and in ornamentation. These boats are not dug-outs, but are built from tree-trunks, smoothed and trimmed with adzes, lashed together—through holes bored near the seams—with withes of rattan. Prow and stern are rounded in graceful curves. The boats present a picturesque and attractive appearance, but cannot be used for making long voyages. That the tribes living in the interior of the island should have lost the art of navigation is Whether the losing of these arts implies that the tribes since they have been in Formosa have not had material as suitable for making either seaworthy boats or uncrumbling pottery as they had in the land whence they came, or whether |