Arrow

“ Whittling a limber branch from a sapling, the Indian hastily makes a bow, and shoots arrow after arrow with the tip in flame to high mid-air, hoping to signal the far-off lodges. But the night is too clear. The sky is silver with stars, and moonlight and reflected snowglare, and the Northern Lights flicker and wane and fade and flame with a brilliancy that dims the tiny blaze of the arrow signal. ”

“ Imagine shooting an arrow from the strongest bow in such a manner that it might travel about seven inches above the ground—how far would it go before it would strike a tall buttercup, a wiry bennet, or stick into a slight rise of the turf? ”

“ We read in Scripture of three sorts of Arrows—the arrow of an enemy, the arrow of pestilence, and the arrow of a slanderous tongue; the two first kill the body, the last the good name; the two former leave a man when he is once dead, but the last mangles him in his grave. ”

“ They sailed over a river, a precipice of stone, rising a sheer two thousand feet, above pines and waterfalls, and then the Arrow came softly to rest in a lovely valley, which birds alone could reach before man took wings unto himself. ”

“ And after the arrow has left the bow, hold the pose! Carry through! Imagine yourself as a statue of an archer, and stay just in that position until you hear the arrow strike.
Just in the beginning, at forty yards, with thirty arrows, you may be satisfied if you hit the target between sixteen and twenty-one times out of the thirty shots and make a score of from sixty to eighty points. Your ambition will be, as in golf, to "break" a hundred. By the time you have done that your muscles will be in shape and you can begin on the American Round. ”

“ May the gods grant us all space to carry a sturdy bow and wander through the forest glades to seek the bounding deer; to lie in the deep meadow grasses; to watch the flight of birds; to smell the fragrance of burning leaves; to cast an upward glance at the unobserved beauty of the moon. May they give us strength to draw the string to the cheek, the arrow to the barb and loose the flying shaft, so long as life may last. ”

“ I drew out the arrow, though it came hardly, and saw that it must be one of mine, a mate to the one lying beside the rock and to those in the quiver. The crushed head of the other body must also be my handiwork, for it was cloven downward to between the eyes, and strong must have been the arm and heavy the axe to shear through bone so deeply. ”

“ No one ever shot an arrow
Half so far and high as he had;
Ever caught so many fishes,
Ever killed so many reindeer,
Ever trapped so many beaver!
⁠None could run so fast as he could,
None could dive so deep as he could,
None could swim so far as he could ”

“ The arrow which that fox should shun Was never shaped from earthly reed. "The Indian Druids of the wood Know where the fatal arrows grow; They spring not by the summer flood; They pierce not through the winter's snow. "Why cowers the dog, whose snuffing nose Was never once deceived till now? And why amidst the chilling snows Does either hunter wipe his brow? "For once they see his fearful den; 'T is a dark cloud that slowly moves By night around the homes of men, By day along the stream it loves. ”

“ And when they advanced within the circle of light thrown out by the flames of the fire, One Ear drew his great bow to his shoulder and sent arrow after arrow into the gleaming breasts of those who made the attack, until the Arrow people were confounded and afraid and fled away in the night whence they had come. ”

“ No one could shoot an arrow without a bow, and when some one shouted that if an arrow was used as a dagger, one wouldn't need a bow, a sort of frenzy seized her and she acted quite insane, falling at the young girl's side and whispering sentence after sentence in her ear. ”

“ From the right side they take the arrow keen,
Ne’er to its quiver to return, I ween;
The bow, the left side’s fitting ornament;
The bow, the tough and pliant bow is bent;
It yields a sound, like thunder from afar,
While flies the arrow, like a streaming star.
None now expects a tale of fabled might ”

“ The trees grow thickly and irregularly round, and the silvery stems of the ash-trees glisten so as to dazzle the steadiest eye. A rude stone is carved with half-obliterated characters; but the record of the fatal arrow is enough to make the place mournful with the presence of death, and to fill the mind with solemn fancies of life's strange accidents. ”

“ She bends her bow, and shoots her arrows at him. He only becomes more ardent, and is on the point of seizing her. In despair, she takes an arrow, and buries it in her lovely body. Lo! she is changed, she stops, smiles, loves, draws near him. ”

“ Om is the bow, the arrow is soul, The Brahman is the arrow's target, That one should incessantly hit. ”

“ One morning, indeed, the fragments of another blunt arrow came to light, broken underfoot and trampled into the dust. The paper scroll, in tatters, held only a few marks legible through dirt and heel-prints: "Listen--work fast--many bags--watch closely." ”

“ It is a very interesting sight to watch a contest of this kind. The eye can hardly follow, not only the arrows, but the rapid movements of the archer, as he draws the arrows and shoots them with all his might up into the blue sky above. Eight, ten, yes, sometimes even a dozen arrows are thus sent with wondrous rapidity, sometimes following so closely that it seems at times to the eye as though some succeeding would catch up to the ones just on ahead. The greater rapidity of the arrow just leaving the bow than that of those some hundreds of feet up adds to this delusion. ”

“ The savage prowling by the spring,
Then sudden passing swift and still,
And bended as a bow is bent.
The arrow sent; the arrow spent
And buried in its bloody place,
The dead man lying on his face!
The clouds of dust, their cloud by day;
Their pillar of unfailing fire
The far North star. And high, and higher.... 75
They climb'd so high it seem'd eftsoon
That they must face the falling moon,
That like some flame-lit ruin lay
Thrown down before their weary way. ”

“ While the howling and the dancing continue, the great chief of the nation, mounting the three posts in triumph, plucks the arrows from the dead body and casts them into the fire. The iron-barbed arrow being the only one preserved for future sacrifices. ”

“ Yet one arrow has a power
Lasting till life's latest hour—
Weary day and sleepless night,
Lightning gleams of fierce delight,
Fragrant and yet poisoned sighs,
Agonies and ecstasies;
Hopes, like fires amid the gloom,
Lighting only to consume! ”

“ Represents a charmed arrow, which, by the power of the meda of the person owning it, is capable of penetrating the entire circle of the sky, and accomplishing the object for which it is shot out of the bow. ”

“ The bow of God’s wrath is bent, and the arrow made ready on the string, and justice bends the arrow at your heart, and strains the bow, and it is nothing but the mere pleasure of God, and that of an angry God, without any promise or obligation at all, that keeps the arrow one moment from being made drunk with your blood. ”

“ The bow and arrow, being a compound implement, nowhere belonged to the earliest stage of human culture. See also H. W. Haynes’ article, “The Bow and Arrow unknown to Palæolithic Man,” in Proceedings of Boston Soc. Nat. History, Vol. XXIII.
19. ”

“ You see, an arrow must be straight or it'll fly crooked. 'Straight as an arrow' means the thing itself. We can do better than the Indians 'cause we have better tools. We can split them out of the solid wood."
"What wood? Some bloomin' foreign kind that no White-man never saw nor heard of before?"
"No sir-ree. There ain't anything better 'n White Pine for target and Ash or Hickory for hunting arrows. Which are we making?" ”

“ Why so placed, and why regarded with such concentrated interest by the men confronting it from the opposite gallery, will become apparent when, upon the Indian's being summoned from his place of modest retirement, it can be seen that the bow he carries in one hand is offset by the arrow he holds in the other. ”

“ An arrow being a slender body, and generally impelled with great force, is often lodged deep, and is to be extracted for the most part rather by the opposite side to which it entered, especially as it has barbs, which tear most if drawn backwards. ”

“ Yet must I yield to death and stubborn fate,
Whene’er, at morn, or noon, or eve, the spear
Or arrow from the bow may reach my life.” ”

“ Then he prepared a bow, — symbol of the sexes, — and having poisoned a rock, or envenomed the flesh of man with a mortal or exterior quality in its desires — (desire is always the Arrow, between the two horns, male and female, of the Bow) — he spoke to the Bow. ”

“ And running along the arrow are three wave-like grooves from the head to the feathers. This, the Indians explain, is to make the arrow go straight. The bow is also made of ash, and with a string of twisted sinew taken from along the back of a beef. So that with an ordinary butcher knife and a file, if it is to be had, an Indian can make his own arms.
PAUL JONES’S “STARRY FLAG.”
The penetrating force of an arrow is wonderful. ”

“ You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth. The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far. Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness; For even as he loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable.Then said a rich man, Speak to us of Giving. ”

“ More difficult to make than the bow is the arrow. The Indians made arrows of reeds and of straight shoots of arrow-wood or of elder, but we make better arrows out of hickory or ash. The arrow should be twenty-five inches long, round, and three-eighths of an inch thick. It should be notched at one end to take the bow-string, and just below this notch it should have three feathers set around at equal intervals. ”

“ This they strike against the ground, at a little distance to one side of them, whence it rises at right angles to its first direction, and flies with the swiftness of an arrow for about one hundred yards, and at a height of about ten feet from the ground. ”

“ In this type of hunting a miss is emphatically not as good as a mile! And the chances are he can try again, and yet again, provided nothing else has occurred to affright his quarry. To most animals the flight of an arrow is little more than the winging past of some strange swift bird. ”

“ An Indian with a strong, and to me almost inflexible bow, threw himself on his back, holding the steel or iron-pointed arrow with both hands against the string of the bow, and with his feet springing it sent the arrow deep into the heart of the animal, which fell at his feet. ”

“ In hunting and war they used the bow and arrow—the bow usually of locust, the arrow of reed, or a wand. The Indian notched his arrow with a beaver's tooth set in a stick, which he used in the place of a file. The arrow was winged with a turkey-feather, fastened with a sort of glue extracted from the velvet horns of the deer. The arrow was headed with an arrow-point of stone, often made of white quartz, and exquisitely formed, some barbed, some with a serrate edge. These are yet to be found in every part of the country. For knives the red men made use of sharpened reeds, or shells, or stone ”

“ Or, to shoot an arrow as far as posible, it is not enough to merely draw the bow to its utmost span or tension. If, just as it goes, you will give the bow a quick push, though the effort be trifling, the arrow will fly almost as far again as it would have done without it. ”

“ Look your arrows over; see that they are straight and that the feathers are in good shape, then shoot them to observe their flight. Number them above the ribbon so that you can keep record of their performances. The weight of such an arrow is one and one-half ounces.
The small blunt, barb-headed arrows we often paint red their entire length. Because they are meant for use in the brush, they are more readily lost; the bright color saves many a shaft.
To make a hunting arrow requires about an hour, and one should be willing to look for one almost this time when it is lost. ”

“ We have come to the belief that no beast is too tough or too large to be slain by an arrow. With especially constructed heads sharpened to the utmost nicety, I have shot through a double thickness of elephant hide, two inches of cardboard, a bag of shaving and gone into an inch of wood. ”

“ Two things are essential to a good arrow, namely, perfect straightness, and a stiffness or rigidity sufficient to stand in the bow, i.e. to receive the force of the bow as delivered by the string without flirting or gadding; for a weak or supple is even worse than a crooked arrow—and it need hardly be said how little conducive to shooting straight is the latter. ”

“ Upon this the flight of the arrow mainly depends, and to how great an extent this may be affected by it may be gathered from the fact that the same bow with a like weight of arrow [124] and length of pull will cast many yards further in the hands of one man than it will in those of another, owing solely and entirely to the different manner in which the string shall have been quitted. ”

“ The arrows do not hurt the plumage as the shot would, because at the end of each one there is a piece of wood, shaped something like an acorn, but as large as a teacup, and the large end of it makes what would be the point of an ordinary arrow. ”

“ The appearance of arrow heads indicates the invention of the bow, and the rise of man from a defensive to an offensive mode of life. The introduction of barbed arrows shows how inventive talent was displaying itself ”

“ The five little arrow-points figured in the second picture are among those I found in the valley. The ax was not far away, and both it and they may have belonged to the same bold and active young hunter. All of these arrow-points are very neatly made.
The same missionary tells us that these young red men of the forest “exercise themselves very early with bows and arrows, and in shooting at a mark. As they grow up, they acquire a remarkable dexterity in shooting birds, squirrels, and small game.” ”