The Atoll of Funafuti, Ellice group : its zoology, botany, ethnology and general structure based on collections made by Charles Hedley of the Australian Museum, Sydney, N.S.W.

Pump Drill.*

Pump Drill.^*

Perhaps the only existing people who do not practise perforation by drilling are the Australian Aborigines, who however incidentally drilled holes in the process of making fire. The Polynesians are much more advanced.

The Pump Drill of the West Pacific never fails to elicit expressions of surprise and admiration from those who first see it used by the natives. So attractive a subject has naturally received due attention from travellers, and as several good figures of it have already appeared, I need not here burden literature with more.

The pump drill seems to have been an evolution from the simple shaft drill, from which it arose by easy and natural improvements. The simple shaft drill, as the older and simpler form, was wider spread in space consequent on its superior antiquity allowing it the greater chance of passing from people to people to remoter limits. When European civilisation invaded the Pacific and commenced to deaden the progress of native manners and customs, the pump drill was probably overtaking and replacing the simple shaft drill on the periphery of an out-rippling circle.

To trace the path of either form would be to unravel the vexed question of the origin of the Pacific races. "The rotatory drill," says Brigham, "and the kupaaikee adze are both Papuan

^* For an account of the pump drill beyond the geographical limits of the present article, see J. D. McGuire—A Study of the primitive methods of Drilling—Report of the U.S. National Museum, 1894, (1896) p. 733.

page 257inventions now spread through the Pacific."^* If so they must have been transmitted to Hawaii by the Micronesians. A possible source of the ancient, simple, shaft drill of the Pacific, is Japan, where Morse thus describes its use:—"For drilling holes, a very long-handled awl is used. The carpenter, seizing the handle at the end, between the palms of his hands, and moving his hands rapidly back and forth, pushing down at the same time, the awl is made rapidly to rotate back and forth; as his hands gradually slip down on the handle, he quickly seizes it at the upper end again, continuing the motion as before."^† Such a drill is introduced into a scene in the island of Rawak, Dutch New Guinea,^‡ Cook noticed this simpler form of drill from Tahiti, and he observed awls armed with sharks' teeth used by the Tongans and the Maories.^§ The Maori greenstone meris are said to have been drilled with a weighted strap drill. "To drill the hole for the thong in the handle … pieces of sharp flint are set in the end of a split stick, being lashed in very neatly. The stick is about fifteen or eighteen inches long, and is to become the spindle of a large teetotum drill. For the circular plate of this instrument the hardened intervertebral cartilage of a whale is taken. A hole is made through, and the stick firmly and accurately fixed in it. Two strings are then attached to the upper end of the stick, and by pulling them a rapid rotatory motion is given to the drill. When an indentation is once made in the pounamu the work is easy. As each flint becomes blunted it is replaced by another."^‖ From New Caledonia I have had a description of a stick drill on a large scale, used for making the nephrite ceremonial axes; to this a stone is slung, performing when set spinning, the office of a fly-wheel. The shaft drill survived till lately on Erromanga, New Hebrides, whence the Rev. H. A. Robertson procured models, now in the Australian Museum. Fire-sticks and the long spines of Echini supplied the Fijian's boring apparatus.

The structure and use of the pump drill is thus described by Dr. Turner:—"Take a piece of wood, eighteen inches long, twice the thickness of a cedar pencil. Fasten with a strong thread a fine pointed nail, or a sail needle, to the end of this sort of spindle. Get a thick piece of wood, about the size of what is called in England a 'hot cross bun,' and in Scotland a 'cookie,' bore a hole in the centre of it, run the spindle through it, and wedge it fast about the middle of the spindle. At the top of the spindle fasten

^* Brigham—loc. tit., pt iii., p. 31.

^† Morse—Japanese Homes, 1888, p. 40.

^‡ Voy. Uranie et Physicienne, 1829, pl. 46.

^§ Cook—First Voyage, ii., 1773, p. 219; Last Voyage, i., 1785, pp. 160 and 395.

^‖ Chapman—Trans. N. Z. Inst., xxiv., 1891 (1892) p. 499. Another type is figured, loc. cit., pl. xxviii.

page 258two strings, each nine inches long, to the end of these strings attach the ends of a common cedar pencil, forming a triangle with a wooden base and side strings. Stand up the machine with your left hand, place the iron point where you wish to bore a hole, and steady the spindle with your left hand. Take hold of the pencil handle of the upper triangle, twirl round the spindle with your left hand, which will coil on the strings at the top to the spindle, pull down the pencil handle quickly, and then the machine will spin round. Work the handle in this way up and down, like a pump, the cord will alternately run off and on to the spindle, and the machine will continue to whirl round, first one way and then the other, until the pearl shell or whatever it may be, is perforated."^*

Perhaps the earliest account we have of the pump drill of the Pacific is the excellent engraving and description of one procured from Fakaafu by the American Expedition on the occasion of their discovery of that island, ^† Turner fully describes this drill and its use in Samoa,^‡ and a Samoan example is figured by Edge-Partington. ^§ At Treasury Island, Solomons, Dr. Guppy saw Mule, the chief, using a pump drill for "piercing the holes for the rattan-like thongs in the planks of his canoe."^‖ Edge-Partington supplies an illustration of a pump drill with a stone point and a turtle fly-wheel from Malayta, Solomons;^¶ and Codrington describes certain disks as "drilled with a pump drill, in Florida 'puputa,'in San Christoval 'nono."'^** Its existence in British New Guinea is attested by D'Albertis, who figures one from Naiabui;^‡ by Stone, who figures and describes another from Port Moresby;^‡ and by Edge-Partington, who figures a third from Kerepunu;^§§ the two latter are peculiar in the substitution of a bar for a fly-wheel. In 1890, I observed a native in the village of Toulon Island engaged in making beads from Strombus shells with the aid of a pump drill. "The rotatory drill was known to the Hawaiians; before the advent of iron the point of a Terebra shell served for borer, but in modern times a triangular file was generally used.^ǁ

^* Turner—-Samoa, 1884, p. 169.

^† Wilkes—loc. cit., v., p. 18, fig.

^‡ Turner—loc. cit., p. 169.

^§ Edge-Partington—loc. cit., i., pl. lxxvii., fig. 1.

^‖ Guppy—loc. cit., p. 76.

^¶ Edge-Partington—loc. cit., i., pl. cei., fig. 3.

^** Codrington—The Melanesians, 1891, p. 325,

^‡ D'Albertis—loc. cit., pl. facing p. 378, fig. 19.

^‡ Stone—A Few Months in New Guinea, 1883, p. 72, fig.

^§§ Edge-Partington—loc. cit., ii,, pl. 174, fig. 4.

page 259

No drills, I believe, existed on Funafuti at the date of our arrival. The natives were, however, well acquainted with the tool and described them to me as formerly in use pointed with Terebra maculata and Mitra episcopalis; a clumsy model of one, pointed with a fragment of Pteroceras, was made on the island for one of our party. On Fakaafu, Lister saw a drill pointed with a sea urchin's tooth. On the neighbouring atoll of Nukulailai I was able to secure a specimen in actual use. Here it was called "milli," and was chiefly employed in making pearl-shell fish-hooks. This specimen weighs six and a half ounces, measures twenty-one inches in total length, is fitted half-way with a fly-wheel four and a half inches in diameter and three-quarters of an inch thick of European or American deal, from one end a rod a foot long is swung from nine inch long sinnet cords, and to the other end is lashed a pointed, steel, triangular, saw-file.^*

^* Since the preceding pages were printed off, a figure and description (Journ. Anthrop. Inst., xxvi., 1897, p. 433) of the New Caledonian drill, therein mentioned, have reached me, † Wilkes—loc. cit., v., p. 17.

▼ About this page

Other formats

Connect

▼ Browse collection

The Atoll of Funafuti, Ellice group : its zoology, botany, ethnology and general structure based on collections made by Charles Hedley of the Australian Museum, Sydney, N.S.W.

Pump Drill.*

Pump Drill.^*