Mr. Forrest, in his paper which was read before the Royal Geographical
Society in June, 1908, speaks of this wild honey as an agreeable
sweetmeat as a change, but that after a few days' constant partaking of
it the European palate rejects it as nauseous and almost disgusting, and
adds that it has escaped the Biblical commentators that one of the
principal hardships which John the Baptist must have undergone was his
diet of wild honey. In another part of his paper the writer says,
speaking of the cross-bow to which I have referred: "Every Li-su with
any pretensions to _chic_ possesses at least one of these weapons--one
for everyday use in hunting, the other for war. The children play with
miniature cross-bows. The men never leave their huts for any purpose
without their cross-bows, when they go to sleep the 'na-kung' is hung
over their heads, and when they die it is hung over their graves. The
largest cross-bows have a span of fully five feet, and require a pull of
thirty-five pounds to string them. The bow is made of a species of wild
mulberry, of great toughness and flexibility. The stock, some four feet
long in the war-bows, is usually of wild plum wood, the string is of
plaited hemp, and the trigger of bone.
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