Guns and men in Melanesia

exactly with the history of hand fire-arms serviceable under battle conditions. The arquebus accompanied Magellan on his first discovery of the Pacific Ocean at a time when hand fire-arms were just beginning to be used as one among many weapons by the regular armies of Europe, and since then fire arms have remained a factor in European power in the region. On the part of the islanders themselves, fire-arms were among the earliest, most consis tently and most eagerly sought of the borrowings from European material culture; together with the steel axe fire-arms soon displaced their former weapons. It follows from this that both Europeans and Pacific Islanders considered that fire-arms of all kinds were valuable weapons. It does not follow, however, that fire-arms conferred superiority of power on their owners under all conditions. The main and most obvious advantages of fire-arms were two: their killing or stopping power at short range, if once the bullet hit the target, and the psychological effect of the noise, smoke and flash of the exploding gunpowder. These advantages have received a good deal of attention. The limitations of early fire-arms do not appear to be nearly so well known, although these were often crucial under battle conditions, giving a good deal of leeway to opponents, especially to those who had an opportunity to become familiar with the new weapons. In certain respects fire-arms were for long inferior not only to other European arms but also to some indige nous weapons. They were inferior, in varying degrees, in range, in accuracy, in rapidity of fire, in safety of operation and reliability. In spite of improve ments, three weaknesses persisted to the middle of the 19th century, to a gradually lessening extent. First was the slowness and clumsiness of reload ing, necessary after every shot arid second, the high rate of misfire. The im portance of these two disadvantages is clear when taken together with the fact that the accurate range of the weapon was very short, and if the first shot missed, or missed fire, the opponent was upon the shooter before he could reload. Thirdly, there was the vulnerability of gunpowder to dampness?a disability of special importance for the Pacific Islands, where there was a