"SLIM" TRICKS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LVII, Issue 207, 9 February 1915, Page 7

"SLIM" TRICKS.

BUSH FlOHTlNl!. The '■slim" tricks of the (lermar. forces in South Africa, of which some thing was told in recent cablegrams, .very probably learned from the nalivi roops, many of whom are no doubt u> ei'.ourceful in bush fighting tactics am. as well skilled in the line art of laying ambuscades as the Maoris or the Red Indian forest tribes were. Indeed, there is something of a likeness between the device of a betraying rope or wire across a bush track, as practised in Fast Africa lately, and an old war-time strategy of the Taranaki Natives. When a Government column was expected to advance along a bush track against a Maori stockade, the Hauhaus would prepare a curious engine of war which they called a "tawhiti," or trap. A sapling of some tough and elastic timber, lnalipo for choice, that grew alongside the trail, was stripped of its branches and bent down ami back, without breaking it, until it lay in as near as possible a horizontal position so that it would sweep the road. The, end was fastened with a slight flax line in such a way that any unsuspecting troops marchim' along the track towards the village and touching the trap would cause the (lax to slip and release the "taivhiti," which in its rebound would cause a terrible blow. In 1800 a Pakeha-Muori who was living with the Hauhaus, and who is still alive, saw ten or twelve "tawhiti" set on the tracks just outside Te Popoia, a small pa in the South Taranaki imsh. The place was attacked by the Government forces in the night and several of the Governmeent Maoris, who formed the advance gtiard.wei'e wounded by tlie unexpected release and re. bound of these savage traps. Another bush-fighting device in which tiic hidden rope is used is .practised to this day by the mountain tribes of Malaita, ill the Solomon Islands, and has been resorted to against landing parties from the British men-of-war who have ventured into the bush searching—generally without success —for the perpetrators of attacks on traders or lab-our-recruiting crews. A fibre cord, so thin as to be invisible in shade-of the bush, is stretched across a track, and the slightest touch by anyone advancing causes the discharge of an ar-1 row from a powerful bow set in a I tree-fork. A somewhat similar t.ris-k has been noted by New Guinea explorers. This is an ingenious form of "spring-gun." which an i-xnloring exiiedition found in use in 101(1 among the Negrito pigmies on the slopes of the Snow Mountains, in Papua. The springmin was made by setting a flattened bamboo spear against a bent, sapling, fastened to a trigger ill such a wnv that it was released by the passer-by stumbling against ar, invisible siring fitretched across a game track. These hardened bamboo spears indicted serious wounds as they were launched wif.lconsiderable force. Ail these primitive notions were the bushmeii's form of protective mine-field against an unwelcome I •surprise party. I