THE
BOOK OF THE SWORD

LONDON: PRINTED BY
SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE
AND PARLIAMENT STREET

THE
BOOK OF THE SWORD

BY

RICHARD F. BURTON

MAÎTRE D’ARMES (BREVETÉ)

WITH NUMEROUS ILLUSTRATIONS

London

CHATTO AND WINDUS, PICCADILLY

1884

[All rights reserved]

‘He that hath no Sword (-knife = μάχαιρα), let him sell his garment and buy one.’ St. Luke xxii. 36.

‘Solo la spada vuol magnificarsi.’
(Nothing is high and awful save the Sword.)
Lod. della Vernaccia, a.d. 1200.

‘But, above all, it is most conducive to the greatness of empire for a nation to profess the skill of arms as its principal glory and most honourable employ.’
Bacon’s Advancement of Learning, viii. 3.

‘The voice of every people is the Sword

That guards them, or the Sword that beats them down.’

Tennyson’s Harold.

TO

THE MEMORY

OF

MY OLD AND DEAR COLLEGE FRIEND

ALFRED BATE RICHARDS

WHO

IN YEARS GONE BY

ACCEPTED THE DEDICATION OF THESE PAGES

FOREWORD.

‘I wanted a book on the Sword, not a treatise on Carte and Tierce,’ said the Publisher, when, some years ago, my earliest manuscript was sent to him.

It struck me then and there that the Publisher was right. Consequently the volume was re-written after a more general and less professional fashion.

I have only one wish that reader and reviewer can grant: namely, a fair field and no favour for certain ‘advanced views’ of Egyptology. It is my conviction that this study, still in its infancy, will greatly modify almost all our preconceived views of archæological history.

RICHARD F. BURTON.

Trieste: November 20, 1883.

INTRODUCTION.

The history of the Sword is the history of humanity. The ‘White Arm’ means something more than the ‘oldest, the most universal, the most varied of weapons, the only one which has lived through all time.’

He, she, or it—for the gender of the Sword varies—has been worshipped with priestly sacrifices as a present god. Hebrew revelation represents the sharp and two-edged Sword going out of the mouth of the King of Kings, and Lord of Lords. We read of a ‘Sword of God, a holy Sword,’ the ‘Sword of the Lord and of Gideon’; and ‘I came not to send peace but a Sword,’ meaning the warfare and martyrdom of man.

On a lower plane the Sword became the invention and the favourite arm of the gods and the demi-gods: a gift of magic, one of the treasures sent down from Heaven, which made Mulciber (‘Malik Kabír,’ the great king) divine, and Voelunder, Quida, Galant, or Wayland Smith a hero. It was consecrated to the deities, and was stored in the Temple and in the Church. It was the ‘key of heaven and hell’: the saying is, ‘If there were no Sword, there would be no law of Mohammed’; and the Moslem brave’s highest title was ‘Sayf Ullah’—Sword of Allah.

Uniformly and persistently personal, the Sword became no longer an abstraction but a Personage, endowed with human as well as superhuman qualities. He was a sentient being who spoke, and sang, and joyed, and grieved. Identified with his wearer he was an object of affection, and was pompously named as a well-beloved son and heir. To surrender the Sword was submission; to break the Sword was degradation. To kiss the Sword was, and in places still is, the highest form of oath and homage.

Lay on our royal Sword your banished hands

says King Richard II. So Walther of Aquitaine:—

Contra Orientalem prostratus corpore partem

Ac nudum retinens ensem hac cum voce precatur.

The Sword killed and cured; the hero when hopeless fell upon his Sword; and the heroine, like Lucretia and Calphurnia, used the blade standing. The Sword cut the Gordian knot of every difficulty. The Sword was the symbol of justice and of martyrdom, and accompanied the wearer to the tomb as well as to the feast and the fight. ‘Lay on my coffin a Sword,’ said dying Heinrich Heine, ‘for I have warred doughtily to win freedom for mankind.’

From days immemorial the Queen of Weapons, a creator as well as a destroyer, ‘carved out history, formed the nations, and shaped the world.’ She decided the Alexandrine and the Cæsarian victories which opened new prospects to human ken. She diffused everywhere the bright lights and splendid benefits of war and conquest, whose functions are all important in the formative and progressive processes. It is no paradox to assert La guerre a enfanté le droit: without War there would be no Right. The cost of life, says Emerson, the dreary havoc of comfort and time, are overpaid by the vistas it opens of Eternal Law reconstructing and uplifting society; it breaks up the old horizon, and we see through the rifts a wider view.

War, again, benefits society by raising its tone above the ineffable littleness and meanness which characterise the every-day life of the many. In the presence of the Great Destroyer, petty feuds and miserable envy, hatred, and malice stand hushed and awe-struck. Very hollow in these days sounds Voltaire’s banter on War when he says that a king picks up a parcel of men who have nothing to do, dresses them in blue cloth at two shillings a yard, binds their hats with coarse white worsted, turns them to the right and left, and marches them away to glory.

The Sword and only the Sword raised the worthier race to power upon the ruins of impotent savagery; and she carried in her train, from time immemorial, throughout the civilised world, Asiatic Africa, Asia, and Europe, the arts and the sciences which humanise mankind. In fact, whatever apparent evil the Sword may have done, she worked for the highest ultimate good. With the Arabs the Sword was a type of individuality. Thus Shanfara, the fleet-foot, sings in his Lamiyyah, (L-poem):—

Three friends: the Heart no fear shall know,

The sharp white Sword, the yellow Bow.

Zayd bin Ali boasts, like El-Mutanabbi:—

The wielded Sword-blade knows my hand,

The Spear obeys my lusty arm.

And Ziyád El-Ajam thus writes the epitaph of El-Mughayrah: ‘So died he, after having sought death between the spear-point and the Sword-edge.’

This ‘Pundonor’ presently extended westward. During the knightly ages the ‘good Sword’ of the Paladin and the Chevalier embodied a new faith—the Religion of Honour, the first step towards the religion of humanity. These men once more taught the sublime truth, the splendid doctrine known to the Stoics and the Pharisees, but unaccountably neglected in later creeds:—

Do good, for Good is good to do.

Their recklessness of all consequences soared worlds-high above the various egotistic systems which bribe man to do good for a personal and private consideration, to win the world, or to save his soul. Hence Aristotle blamed his contemporaries, the Spartans: ‘They are indeed good men, but they have not the supreme consummate excellence of loving all things worthy, decent and laudable, purely as such and for their own sakes; nor of practising virtue for no other motive but the sole love of her own innate beauty.’ The ‘everlasting Law of Honour binding on all and peculiar to each,’ would have thoroughly satisfied the Stagirite’s highest aspirations.

In knightly hands the Sword acknowledged no Fate but that of freedom and free-will; and it bred the very spirit of chivalry, a keen personal sentiment of self-respect, of dignity, and of loyalty, with the noble desire to protect weakness against the abuse of strength. The knightly Sword was ever the representative idea, the present and eternal symbol of all that man most prized—courage and freedom. The names describe her quality: she is Joyeuse, and La Tisona; he is Zú ’l-Fikár (sire of splitting) and Quersteinbeis, biter of the mill-stone. The weapon was everywhere held to be the best friend of bravery, and the worst foe of perfidy; the companion of authority, and the token of commandment; the outward and visible sign of force and fidelity, of conquest and dominion, of all that Humanity wants to have and wants to be.

The Sword was carried by and before kings; and the brand, not the sceptre, noted their seals of state. As the firm friend of the crown and of the ermine robe, it became the second fountain of honour. Amongst the ancient Germans even the judges sat armed on the judgment-seat; and at marriages it represented the bridegroom in his absence. Noble and ennobling, its touch upon the shoulder conferred the prize of knighthood. As ‘bakhshish’ it was, and still is, the highest testimony to the soldier’s character; a proof that he is ‘brave as his sword-blade.’ Its presence was a moral lesson; unlike the Greeks, the Romans, and the Hebrews, Western and Southern Europe, during its chivalrous ages, appeared nowhere and on no occasion without the Sword. It was ever ready to leap from its sheath in the cause of weakness and at the call of Honour. Hence, with its arrogant individuality, the Sword still remained the ‘all-sufficient type and token of the higher sentiments and the higher tendencies of human nature.’

In society the position of the Sword was remarkable. ‘Its aspect was brilliant; its manners were courtly; its habits were punctilious, and its connections were patrician.’ Its very vices were glittering; for most of them were the abuses which could not but accompany its uses. It bore itself haughtily as a victor, an arbitrator; and necessarily there were times when its superlative qualities showed corresponding defects. Handled by the vile it too often became, in the ‘syllogism of violence,’ an incubus, a blusterer, a bully, a tyrant, a murderer, an assassin, in fact ‘death’s stamp’; and under such conditions it was a ‘corruption of the best.’ But its lapses were individual and transient; its benefits to Humanity were general and ever-enduring.

The highest period of the Sword was the early sixteenth century, that mighty landmark separating the dark Past from the brilliant Present of Europe. The sudden awaking and excitement of man’s mind, produced by the revival of learning and the marriage-union of the West with the East; by the discovering of a new hemisphere, the doubling of the world; by the so-called Reformation, a northern protest against the slavery of the soul; by the wide spread of the printing-press, which meant knowledge; and, simultaneously, by the illumination of that electric spark generated from the contact of human thought, suddenly changed the status of the Sword. It was no longer an assailant, a slaughterer: it became a defender, a preserver. It learned to be shield as well as Sword. And now arose swordsmanship proper, when the ‘Art of Arms’ meant, amongst the old masters, the Art of Fence. The sixteenth century was its Golden Age.

At this time the Sword was not only the Queen of Weapons, but the weapon paramount between man and man. Then, advancing by slow, stealthy, and stumbling steps, the age of gunpowder, of ‘villanous saltpetre,’ appeared upon the scene of life. Gradually the bayonet, a modern modification of the pike, which again derives from the savage spear, one of the earliest forms of the arme blanche, ousted the Sword amongst infantry because the former could be combined with the fire-piece. A century afterwards cavalrymen learned, in the Federal-Confederate war, to prefer the revolver and repeater, the breech-loader and the reservoir-gun, to the sabre of past generations. It became an axiom that in a cavalry charge the spur, not the Sword, gains the day. By no means a unique, nor even a singular process of progress, is this return towards the past, this falling back upon the instincts of primitive invention, this recurrence to childhood: when the science of war reverted to ballistics it practically revived the practice of the first ages, and the characteristic attack of the savage and the barbarian who, as a rule, throw their weapons. The cannon is the ballista, and the arblast, the mangonel, and the trebuchet, worked not by muscular but by chemical forces. The torpedo is still the old, old petard; the spur of the ironclad is the long-disused embolon, rostrum, or beak; and steam-power is a rough, cheap substitute for man-power, for the banks of oarsmen, whose work had a delicacy of manipulation unknown to machinery, however ingenious. The armed nations, which in Europe are again becoming the substitutes for standing armies, represent the savage and barbarous stages of society, the proto-historic races, amongst which every man between the ages of fifteen and fifty is a man-at-arms. It is the same in moral matters; the general spread of the revolutionary spirit, of republicanism, of democratic ideas, of communistic, socialistic, and nihilistic rights and claims now acting so powerfully upon society and upon the brotherhood of nations, is a re-dawning of that early day when the peoples ruled themselves, and were not yet governed by priestly and soldier kings. It is the same even in the ‘immaterials.’ The Swedenborgian school, popularly known by the trivial name Spiritualism, has revived magic, and this ‘new motor force,’ for such I call it, has resurrected the Ghost, which many a wise head supposed to have been laid for ever.

The death-song of the Sword has been sung, and we are told that ‘Steel has ceased to be a gentleman.’[1] Not so! and by no means so. These are mere insular and insulated views, and England, though a grand figure, the mother of nations, the modern Rome, is yet but a fraction of the world. The Englishman and, for that matter, the German and the Scandinavian, adopted with a protest, and right unwillingly, swordsmanship proper—that is, rapier and point, the peculiar and especial weapon, offensive and defensive, of Southern Europe, Spain, Italy, and France. During the most flourishing age of the Sword it is rare to find a blade bearing the name of an English maker, and English inscriptions seldom date earlier than the eighteenth century. The reason is evident. The Northerners hacked with hangers, they hewed with hatchets, and they cut with cutlasses because the arm suited their bulk and stature, weight and strength. But such weapons are the brutality of the Sword. In England swordsmanship is, and ever was, an exotic; like the sentiment, as opposed to the knowledge, of Art, it is the property of the few, not of the many; and, being rare, it is somewhat ‘un-English.’

But the case is different on the continent of Europe. Probably at no period during the last four centuries has the Sword been so ardently studied as it is now by the Latin race in France and Italy. At no time have the schools been so distinguished for intellectual as well as for moral proficiency. The use of the foil ‘bated’ and ‘unbated’ has once more become quasi-universal. A duello, in the most approved fashion of our ancestors, was lately proposed (September 1882) by ten journalists of a Parisian paper, to as many on the staff of a rival publication. Even the softer sex in France and Italy has become cunning of fence; and women are among the most prosperous pupils of the salles d’armes. Witness, for instance, the ill-fated Mdlle. Feyghine of the Théâtre Français, so celebrated for her skill in ‘the carte and the tierce and the reason demonstrative.’

Nor is the cause of this wider diffusion far to seek. In the presence of arms of precision, the Sword, as a means of offence and defence, may practically fall for a time into disuse. It may no longer be the arm paramount or represent an idea. It may have come down from its high estate as tutor to the noble and the great. Yet not the less it has, and will ever have, its work to do. The Ex-Queen now appears as instructress-general in the art of arms. As the mathematic is the basis of all exact science, so Sword-play teaches the soldier to handle every other weapon. This is well known to Continental armies, in which each regiment has its own fencing establishment and its salle d’armes.

Again, men of thought cannot ignore the intrinsic value of the Sword for stimulating physical qualities. Ce n’est pas assez de roidir l’âme, il faut aussi roidir les muscles, says Montaigne, who also remarks of fencing that it is the only exercise wherein l’esprit s’en exerce. The best of callisthenics, this energetic educator teaches the man to carry himself like a soldier. A compendium of gymnastics, it increases strength and activity, dexterity and rapidity of movement. Professors calculate that one hour of hard fencing wastes forty ounces by perspiration and respiration. The foil is still the best training tool for the consensus of eye and hand; for the judgment of distance and opportunity; and, in fact, for the practice of combat. And thus swordsmanship engenders moral confidence and self-reliance while it stimulates a habit of resource; and it is not without suggesting, even in the schools, that ‘curious, fantastic, very noble generosity proper to itself alone.’

And now when the vain glory of violence has passed away from the Sword with the customs of a past age, we can hardly ignore the fact that the manners of nations have changed, not for the best. As soon as the Sword ceased to be worn in France, a Frenchman said of his compatriots that the ‘politest people in Europe had suddenly become the rudest.’ That gallant and courteous bearing, which in England during the early nineteenth century so charmed the ‘fiery and fastidious Alfieri’ lingers only amongst a few. True the swash-buckler, the professional duellist, has disappeared. But courtesy and punctiliousness, the politeness of man to man, and respect and deference of man to woman—that Frauencultus, the very conception of the knightly character—have to a great extent been ‘improved off.’ The latter condition of society, indeed, seems to survive only in the most cultivated classes of Europe; and, popularly, amongst the citizens of the United States, a curious oasis of chivalry in a waste of bald utilitarianism—preserved not by the Sword but by the revolver. Our England has abolished the duello without substituting aught better for it: she has stopped the effect and left the cause.

So far I have written concerning the Sword simply to show that my work does not come out ‘a day after the fair’; and that there is still a powerful vitality in the heroic Weapon. The details of such general statements will be established and developed in the following pages. It is now advisable to introduce this volume to the reader.

During the ‘seventies’ I began, with a light heart, my Book of the Sword, expecting to finish it within a few months. It has occupied me as many years. Not only study and thought, but travel and inspection, were found indispensable; a monograph on the Sword and its literature involved visiting almost all the great armouries of continental Europe, and a journey to India in 1875–6. The short period of months served only to show that a memoir of the Sword embraces the annals of the world. The long term of years has convinced me that to treat the subject in its totality is impossible within reasonable limits.

It will hardly be said that a monograph of the Sword is not wanted. Students who would learn her origin, genealogy, and history, find no single publication ready to hand. They must ransack catalogues and books on ‘arms and armour’ that are numbered by the score. They must hunt up fugitive pamphlets; papers consigned to the literary store-rooms called magazines; and stray notices deep buried in the ponderous tomes of Recueils and general works on Hoplology. They must wade through volume after volume of histories and travels, to pick up a few stray sentences. And they will too often find that the index of an English book which gives copious references to glass or sugar utterly ignores the Sword. At times they must labour in the dark, for men who write seem wholly unconscious of the subject’s importance. For instance, much has been said about art in Japan; but our knowledge of her metallurgy especially of her iron and steel works, is elementary, while that of her peculiar and admirable cutlery is strangely superficial. And travellers and collectors treat the Sword much as they do objects of natural history. They regard only the rare, the forms which they ignore, or which strike the eye, and the unique specimens which may have no comparative value. Thus they neglect articles of far more interest and of higher importance to the student, and they bring home, often at great expense, mere lumber for curiosity shops.

The difficulty of treating the Sword is enhanced by the peculiar individuality which characterises it, evidenced by an immense variety of physique, and resulting as much from unconscious selection as from deep design. One of the characteristics of indigenous art is that no two articles, especially no two weapons, are exactly alike; and yet they vary only within narrow and measurable limits. The minute differentiæ of the Sword are endless. Even in the present day, swordsmen will order some shape, size, or weight which they hold—often unwisely enough—to be improvements on the general. One man, wishing to strengthen his arm, devises a weapon fit for a Titan and finds it worse than useless. A tale is told of a Sheffield cutler who, having received from Maroccan Mogador a wooden model to be copied in steel, made several hundred blades on the same pattern and failed to find a single purchaser. Their general resemblance to the prevailing type was marred by peculiarities which unsuited them for general use; they were adapted only to individual requirement, each man priding himself upon his own pattern having some almost imperceptible difference. Such variations are intelligible enough in the Sword, which must be modified for every personality, because it becomes to the swordsman a prolongation of his own person, a lengthening of the arm. The natural results are the protean shapes of the weapon and the difficulty of reducing these shapes to orderly description. I cannot, therefore, agree with a President of the Anthropological Institute (‘Journal,’ October 1876) when he states: ‘Certainly the same forms of Sword might be found in different countries, but not of so peculiar a nature (as the Gaboon weapon) unless the form had been communicated.’ Shapes apparently identical start up spontaneously, because types are limited and man’s preferences easily traverse the whole range of his invention.

Thus the stumbling-block which met me on the threshold was to introduce sequence, system, and lucid order into a chaos of details. It was necessary to discover some unity, some starting-place for evolution and development, without which all treatment would be vague and inconsequent. But where find the clue which makes straight the labyrinthine paths; the point de mire which enables us to command the whole prospect; the coign of vantage which displays the disposition of details, together with the nexus, the intercommunication, and the progress of the parts and the whole?

Two different systems of that ‘classification, which defines the margin of our ignorance,’ are adopted by museums; and, consequently, by the catalogues describing them. I shall here quote only English collections, leaving to the Continental reader the task of applying the two main principles locally and generally. These are, first, the Topical or Geographical (e.g. Christy collection), which, as the words denote, examines the article itself mainly with reference to its media, nature and culture, place and date; and which considers man and his works as the expression of the soil that bears him. The second is the Material and purely Formal (General A. Pitt-Rivers’ collection), which regards only the objects or specimens themselves, without respect to their makers or their media; and which, by investigating the rival laws of continuity and of incessant variation, aims at extending our knowledge of mankind. Both plans have their merits and their demerits. The Topical is the more strictly anthropologico-ethnological, because it makes the general racial culture its prominent feature; but it fails to illustrate, by juxtaposition, the origin, the life, and the death of a special article. The Formal proposes to itself the study of specific ideas; it describes their transmissions and their migrations; and it displays their connection and sequence, their development and degradation. It exemplifies the law of unconscious selection, as opposed to premeditation and design. Thus it claims superior sociological interest, while it somewhat separates and isolates the article from its surroundings—mankind.

Again, it would be unadvisable to neglect the chronological and synchronological order (Demmin’s). This assists us in tracing with a surer hand the origin and derivation; the annals, the adventures, and the accidents of an almost universal weapon, whose marvellously chequered career excels in dignity, in poetry, and in romance, anything and everything the world has yet seen. And here I have not been unmindful of Dr. Arthur Mitchell’s sensible warning that ‘the rude form of an implement may follow as well as precede the more finished forms.’[2] Due regard to dates enables us to avoid the scandalous confusion of the vulgar museum. Demmin found a large number of swords catalogued as dating with the time of Charles the Bold, when the shapes proved that they belonged to the late sixteenth and even to the early seventeenth centuries. I was shown, in the museum of Aquileja, a ‘Roman sword’ which was a basket-hilted Venetian, hardly two hundred years old. It is only an exact chronology, made to frame the Geographical and the Formal pictures of the weapon, that can secure scientific distribution.

In dealing with a subject which, like the Sword, ranges through the world-history, and which concerns the human race in general, it would, I venture to opine, be unwise to adopt a single system. As clearness can be obtained only by methodical distribution of matter, all the several processes must be combined with what art the artificer may. The Formal, which includes the Material, as well as the shape of the weapon, affords one fair basis for classification. The substance, for instance, ranges from wood to steel, and the profile from the straight line to the segment of a circle. The Topical, beginning (as far as we know) in the Nile Valley, and thence in ancient days overspreading Africa, Asia, Europe, and America, determines the distribution and shows the general continuity of the noble arm. It also readily associates itself with the chronologico-historical order, which begins ab initio, furnishes a proof of general progress, interrupted only by fitful stages of retrogression, and, finally, dwells upon the epochs of the highest interest.

After not a little study I resolved to distribute the ‘Book of the Sword’ into three parts.

Part I. treats of the birth, parentage, and early career of the Sword. It begins with the very beginning, in prehistoric times and amongst proto-historic peoples; and it ends with the full growth of the Sword at the epoch of the early Roman Empire.

Part II. treats of the Sword fully grown. It opens with the rising civilisation of the Northern Barbarians and with the decline of Rome under Constantine (a.d. 313–324), who combined Christianity with Mithraism; when the world-capital was transferred to Byzantium, and when an imitation of Orientalism, specially of ‘Persic apparatus,’ led to the art decay which we denote by the term ‘Lower Empire.’ It proceeds to the rise of El-Islam; the origin of ordered chivalry and knighthood; the succession of the Crusades and the wars of arms and armour before the gunpowder age, when the general use of ballistics by means of explosives became the marking feature of battle. This was the palmy period of the Sword. It became a beautiful work of art; and the highest genius did not disdain to chase and gem the handle and sheath. And its career culminates with the early sixteenth century, when the weapon of offence assumed its defensive phase and rose to a height of splendour that prognosticated downfall, as surely as the bursting of a rocket precedes its extinction.

Part III. continues the memoirs of the Sword, which, after long declining, revives once more in our day. This portion embraces descriptions of the modern blade, notices of collections, public and private, notes on manufactures; and, lastly, the bibliography and the literature connected with the Heroic Weapon.

Part I., contained in this volume, numbers thirteen chapters, of which a bird’s-eye view is given by the List of Contents. The first seven are formally and chronologically arranged. Thus we have the Origin of Weapons (Chapter I.) showing that while the arm is common to man and beast, the weapon, as a rule, belongs to our kind. Chapter II. treats of the first weapon proper, the Stone, which gave rise to ballistics as well as to implements of percussion. Follows (Chapter III.) the blade of base materials, wood, stone and bone, materials still used by races which can procure nothing better. From this point a step leads to the metal blade, in its origin evidently a copy of preceding types. The first, (Chapter IV.) is of pure copper, in our translations generally rendered by ‘brass’ or ‘bronze.’ The intermediate substances (Chapter V.) are represented by alloys, a variety of mixed metals; and they naturally end with the so-called ‘age’ of early iron, which prevailed throughout Europe at a time when the valleys of the Nile and the Tigris-Euphrates wrought blades of the finest steel. This division concludes with a formal and technical Chapter (VII.) on the shape of the Sword and a description of its several parts. Here the subject does not readily lend itself to lively description; but, if I have been compelled to be dull, I have done my best to avoid being tedious.

The arrangement then becomes geographical and chronological. My next five chapters are devoted to the Sword in its topical distribution and connection. The first (No. VIII.) begins with the various blade-forms in ancient Egypt, which extended throughout the then civilised world; it ends with showing that the Nile valley gave their present shapes to the ‘white arm’ of the Dark Continent even in its modern day, and applied to the Sword the name which it still bears in Europe. The second (No. IX.) passes to Palestine, Syria, and Asia Minor, lands which manifestly borrowed the weapon from the Egyptians, and handed it on to Assyria, Persia, and India. The arms and armour of the ‘great Interamnian Plain’ afford material for a third (Chapter X.). Thence, retracing our steps and passing further westwards, we find manifest derivation and immense improvement of the Egyptian weapon in Greece (Chapter XI.), from which Mycenæ has lately supplied bronze rapiers perfectly formed as the steels of Bilboa and Toledo. The fifth Chapter (No. XII.) continues the ancient history of the Sword by describing the various blades of progressive Rome, whose wise choice and change of arms enabled her to gain the greatest battles with the least amount of loss. To this I have appended, for geographical and chronological symmetry, in a sixth and last chapter (No. XIII.), a sketch of the Sword among the contemporary Barbarians of the Roman Empire, Dacians, Italians, Iberians, Gauls, Germans, and the British Islands. This portion of the Sword history, however, especially the Scandinavian and the Irish, will be treated at full length in Part II.

Here, then, ends the First Part, which Messrs. Chatto and Windus have kindly consented to publish, whilst my large collection of notes, the labour of years, is being ordered and digested for the other two. I may fairly hope, if all go well, to see both in print before the end of 1884.

In the following pages I have confined myself, as much as was possible, to the Sword; a theme which, indeed, offers an embarras de richesses. But weapons cannot be wholly isolated, especially when discussing origins: one naturally derives from and connects with the other; and these relations may hardly be passed over without notice. I have, therefore, indulged in an occasional divagation, especially concerning the axe and the spear; but the main line has never been deserted.

Nor need I offer an excuse for the amount of philological discussion which the nomenclature of the Sword has rendered necessary. If I have opposed the Past Masters of the art, my opposition has been honest, and I am ever open to refutation. Travellers refuse to believe that ‘Aryanism’ was born on the bald, bleak highlands of Central Asia, or that ‘Semitism’ derives from the dreary, fiery deserts of Arabia. We do not believe India to be ‘the country which even more than Greece or Rome was the cradle of grammar and philology.’ I cannot but hold that England has, of late years, been greatly misled by the ‘Aryan heresy’; and I look forward to the study being set upon a sounder base.

The illustrations, numbering 293, have been entrusted to the artistic hands of Mr. Joseph Grego, who has taken a friendly interest in the work. But too much must not be expected from them in a book which intends to be popular, and which is, therefore, limited in the matter of expense. Hence they are fewer than I should have desired. The libraries of Europe contain many catalogues of weapons printed in folio with highly finished and coloured plates which here would be out of place. That such a work upon the subject of the Sword will presently appear I have no doubt; and my only hope is that this volume will prove an efficient introduction.

To conclude. I return grateful thanks to the many mitwerkers who have assisted me in preparing this monograph; no more need be said, as all names will be mentioned in the course of the work. A journey to the Gold Coast and its results, in two volumes, which describe its wealth, must plead my excuse for the delay in bringing out the book. The manuscript was sent home from Lisbon in December 1881, but the ‘tyranny of circumstance’ has withheld it for nearly two years.

RICHARD F. BURTON.

Postscript. An afterthought suggests that it is only fair, both for readers and for myself, to own that sundry quotations have been borrowed at second-hand and that the work of verification, so rightly enjoined upon writers, has not always been possible. These blemishes are hardly to be avoided in a first edition. At Trieste, and other places distant from the great seats of civilisation, libraries of reference are unknown; and it is vain to seek for the original source. Indeed, Mr. James Fergusson once wrote to me that it was an overbold thing to undertake a History of the Sword under such circumstances. However, I made the best use of sundry visits to London and Paris, Berlin, Vienna, and other capitals, and did what I could to remedy defects. Lastly, the illustrations have not always, as they ought, been drawn to scale, they were borrowed from a number of volumes which paid scant attention to this requisite.

LIST OF AUTHORITIES.

• Academy (The), a Weekly Review of Literature, Science, and Art.
• Agricola, De Re Metallicâ, First published in 1551.
• Akermann (J. Y.), Remains of Pagan Saxondom. London: Smith, mdccclv.
• Amicis (Edoardo de), Marocco. Milan: Treves, 1876.
• Ammianus Marcellinus, Historian of the Lower Empire. Fourth century.
• Anderson (J. R.), Saint Mark’s Rest: the Place of Dragons, edited by John Ruskin, LL.D. Allen: Sunnyside, Orpington, Kent, 1879.
• Anderson (Joseph), Scotland in Early Christian Times. Rhind Lectures in Archæology for 1879. Edinburgh: Douglas, 1882.
• Anthropologia (London Anthropological Society. Established Jan. 22, 1873; first number, Oct. 1873; died after fifth number, July 1875.)
• Anthropological Institute (The Journal of). London: Trübner.
• Anthropological Review, Vol. I.-III. London: Trübner, 1863–65.
• Antiquaries of London (Society of), from the beginning in 1770 to 1883.
• Antiquities of Orissa, by Rajendralala Mitra, 2 vols. fol.; published by Government of India.
• Apuleius (a.d. 130).
• Archæologia, or Tracts relating to Antiquity, published by the Society of Antiquaries of London, from the commencement in 1749 to 1863.
• Archæological Association, vol. iv., Weapons, &c., of Horn.
• Archæology (Transactions of the Society of Biblical), London: Longmans; beginning in 1872.
• Aristophanes.
• Aristotle, Meteorologica, &c.
• Arrian (Flavius), a.d. 90, Anabasis, &c.
• Athenæum (The), Journal of English and Foreign Literature, &c.
• Athenæus (a.d. 230), Deipnosophists.
• Baker (Sir Samuel White), The Nile Tributaries. London: Macmillan, 1866. The Albert Nyanza. London, 1868.
• Balthazar Ribello de Aragão; Viagens dos Portuguezes, Collecção de Documentas, por Luciano Cordeiro, Lisboa, Imprensa Nacional, 1881. The learned Editor is Secretary to the Royal Geographical Society of Lisbon.
• Barbosa (Duarte), A Description of the Coasts of East Africa and Malabar, translated for the Hakluyt Society, London, by Honourable Henry E. (now Lord) Stanley, 1866. Written about a.d. 1512–14, and attributed by some to Magellan.
• Barth (Henry), Travels, &c., in Central Africa 1849–1855; 5 vols., 8vo. London: Longmans, 1875.
• Barthélemy (Abbé J. J.), Voyage du Jeune Anacharsis en Grèce, &c., 5 vols. 4to. Paris, 1788.
• Bataillard (Paul) On Gypsies and other Matters, Société Anthropologique de Paris, 1874.
• Beckmann (John), A History of Inventions, Discoveries, and Origins, translated by W. Johnston. London: Bell and Daldy, 1872 (fourth edition, revised). It is a useful book of reference and wants only a few additions.
• Berosus (b.c. 261), Fragments, edit. Müller.
• Bollaert (William), Antiquarian, Ethnological, and other Researches. London: Trübner, 1860.
• Bologna, Congrès d’Archéologie et d’Anthropologie Préhistoriques, Session de Bologna, 1 vol. 8vo. Fava and Garagnani: Bologna, 1871.
• Bonnycastle (Captain R. H., of the Royal Engineers), Spanish America, &c. Philadelphia: A. Small, 1817.
• Borlase (William), Observations on the Antiquities, &c., of the County of Cornwall. Oxford, 1754.
• Boscawen (W. St. Chad), Papers in Society of Biblical Archæology.
• Boutell (Charles), Arms and Armour. London, 1867.
• Brewster (Sir David), Letters on Natural Magic, 12mo. London, 1833.
• Brugsch (Heinrich), A History of Egypt under the Pharaohs, &c., by Henry Brugsch-Bey (now Pasha). Translated from the German by the late Henry Danby Seymour; completed and edited by Philip Smith, 2 vols. 8vo. London: Murray, 1879. The first part has been published in French, Leipzig, 1859. The archaistic German style of Geschichte Aegypten’s is very difficult.
• Bulletin de l’Institut Égyptien. Cairo: Mourès, 1882.
• Bunsen (Baron C. C. J.), Egypt’s Place in Universal History, &c., with additions by Samuel Birch, LL. D., 5 vols. 8vo. London: Longmans, 1867.
• Burnouf (Émile), Essai sur le Veda, ou Études sur les Religions, &c., de l’Inde, 1 vol. 8vo., 1863. ‘L’Age de Bronze,’ Revue des deux Mondes, July 15, 1877.
• Burton (R. F.), A Complete System of Bayonet Exercise. London: Clowes, 1853. The Athenæum, Nov, 24, 1880. Camoens, his Life and his Lusiads, 2 vols. 12mo., Quaritch, 1881. To the Gold Coast for Gold. London: Chatto and Windus, 1883.
• Cæsar (Julius), Opera Omnia, Delphin edit., variorum notes, 4 vols. 8vo. Londini, 1819.
• Calder (J. E.), Some Account of the Wars of Extirpation and Habits of the Native Tribes of Tasmania, Journ. Anthrop. Instit., vol. iii. 1873.
• Cameron (Commander Verney Lovett, C.B., D.C.L., &c.), Across Africa. London: Daldy and Isbister, 1877.
• Camoens, Os Lusiadas.
• Catalogue du Bulak Muséum, by the late Mariette-Bey (afterwards Pasha). Cairo: A. Mourès, imprimeur-éditeur.
• Catalog. Die Ethnographisch-Anthropologische Abtheilung des Museums Godefroy in Hamburg, vol. i. 8vo. L. Frederichsen u. Co. 1881.
• Caylus (Comte de), Recueil d’Antiquités Égyptiennes, &c., 8 vols. 4to. Paris, 1752–70.
• Celsus (A. Cornelius), De Medicinâ, edit. princeps. Florentiæ, a Nicolao impressus, a.d. 1478.
• Chabas, Études sur l’Antiquité Historique d’après les sources Égyptiennes, 1872.
• Chaillu (Paul B. du), Explorations and Adventures in Equatorial Africa, &c. London: Murray, 1861. The Gorilla-book.
• Chapman (Captain George), Foil Practice, with a Review of the Art of Fencing. London: Clowes, 1861.
• Clapperton (Captain H.), Journal of a Second Expedition into Africa, 1 vol. 4to. London, 1829.
• Clermont-Ganneau (Charles), Horus et Saint George, &c. Extrait de la Revue Archéologique, Dec. 1877. Paris: Didier et C^ie. The author is a prolific writer and a highly distinguished Orientalist.
• Cochet (Jean Benoît Désiré, Abbé), Le Tombeau de Childéric I., Roi des Francs. Restitué à l’aide de l’archéologie et des découvertes récentes, 8vo. Paris: 1859.
• Cole (Lieutenant H. H., of the Royal Engineers), Catalogue of Indian Art in the South Kensington Museum.
• —— Illustrations of Ancient Buildings in Kashmir, prepared under the authority of the Secretary of State for India from photographs, plans, and drawings taken by order of the Government of India. London, 1869. 4to.
• —— The Architecture of Ancient Delhi, especially the buildings around the Kutb Minar, fol. London, 1872.
• Cooper (Rev. Basil H.), The Antiquity and the Use of Metals and especially Iron, among the Egyptians, Transac. Devonshire Assoc. for the Advancement of Science, 1868.
• Cory (Isaac Preston), Ancient Fragments of the Phœnician, Chaldæan, Egyptian, Tyrian, Carthaginian, and other writers, 8vo. London, 1832. Very rare. New edit. Reeves and Turner: London, 1876.
• Crawfurd (John), On the Sources of the Supply of Tin for the Bronze Tools and Weapons of Antiquity, Trans. Ethnol. Soc., N.S., vol. iii. 1865.
• Cunningham (General A.), The Bhilsa Topes, &c., 8vo. London, 1854. Ládak, &c., royal 8vo. London, 1854. Archæological Survey of India, 6 vols. 8vo. Simla, 1871–78.
• Czoernig (Baron Carl von), jun. Ueber die vorhistorischen Funde im Laibacher Torfmoor. Alpine Soc. of Trieste, Dec. 8, 1875.
• Daniel (Père Gabriel), Histoire de la Milice Françoise, et des Changemens qui s’y sont faits, depuis l’établissement de la Monarchie Françoise dans les Gaules, jusqu’à la fin du Régne de Louis le Grand, 7 vols. 8vo. À Amsterdam; au dépens de la Compagnie (de Jésus), mdccxxiv. It is a standard work as far as it goes.
• Davis (Sir John F.), The Chinese: a general Description of the Empire of China and its Inhabitants, 2 vols. 8vo. London: Knight, mdcccvi.
• Day (St. John Vincent), The Prehistoric Use of Iron and Steel. London: Trübner, 1877. When sending me a copy of his learned and original study, Mr. Day wrote to me that he is bringing out a second edition, in which his ‘collection of additional matter will modify and correct certain of his former views.’
• Demmin (Auguste), Illustrated History of Arms and Armour, translated by C. C. Black, M.A. London: Bell, 1877. The illustrations leave much to be desired; the Oriental notices are deficient, and the translator has made them worse. Otherwise the book gives a fair general and superficial view.
• Denham (Major Dixon), Clapperton and Oudney’s Travels in Northern and Central Africa, in 1822–24, 2 vols. 8vo. London, 1826.
• Deschmann und Hochstetter, Prähistorische Ansiedlungen, &c., in Krain. Laybach, 1879.
• Desor (Edouard), Les Palafittes, ou Constructions lacustres du lac de Neuchâtel. Paris, 1865. Die Pfahlbauten des Neuenberger Sees. Frankfurt a. M., 1866. Desor et Favre, Le Bel Age du Bronze lacustre en Suisse, 1 vol. fol. Neufchâtel, 1874.
• Diodorus Siculus (b.c. 44), Bibliotheca Historica, P. Wesselingius, 2 vols. fol. Amstelod., 1746.
• Dion Cassius (nat. a.d. 155).
• Dionysius of Halicarnassus (b.c. 29), Opera Omnia, J. J. Reiske, 6 vols. 8vo. Lipsiæ, 1774.
• Dodwell (Edward), A Classical and Topographical Tour through Greece, 1801–6, 2 vols. 4to. London, 1819.
• Douglas (Rev. James, F.A.S.), Nænia Britannica, 1793, folio.
• Dümichen, Geschichte des alten Aegyptens. Berlin, 1879.
• Ebers (Prof. George), Aegypten und die Bücher Moses. Leipzig, 1868. Followed by sundry Germano-Egyptian romances, An Egyptian Princess, Uarda, &c.
• Edkins (Rev. Dr.), China’s Place in Philology: an Attempt to show that the Languages of Europe and Asia have a Common Origin. London, 1 vol. 8vo., 1871.
• Ellis (Rev. William), Polynesian Researches. London: Murray, 1858.
• Elphinstone, History of India, 2 vols. 8vo. 1841.
• Encyclopædia Britannica.
• —— Metropolitana.
• —— Penny (one of the best).
• —— Knight’s.
• Engel (W. H.), Kypros: eine Monographie. 2 vols. 8vo. Berlin: Reimer, 1841.
• Ethnological Society of London (Journal of) 7 vols. 8vo. 1848–65.
• Eusebius (Bishop of Cæsarea, a.d. 264–340), Historiæ Ecclesiasticæ Libri Decem; denuo edidit F. A. Heinichen, 3 vols. 8vo. Lipsiæ, 1868.
• Evans (Dr. John), The Ancient Stone Implements of Great Britain, 1 vol. 8vo. London: Longmans, 1872. The Ancient Implements of Great Britain and Ireland, ibid. 1881. Both works are admirably well studied and exhaust the subjects as far as they are now known.
• Ewbank (Thomas), Life in Brazil, 1 vol. 8vo. New York, 1856; London: Sampson Low and Co., 1856. The Appendix is anthropologically valuable.
• Fairholt (F. W.), A Dictionary of Terms of Art, 1 vol. 12mo. Virtue and Hall, London, 1849.
• Farrar (Canon), Life, &c., of Saint Paul. Cassell and Co.: London, Paris, and New York (undated).
• Ferguson (Sir James), Transactions of the Irish Association.
• Fergusson (James), A History of Architecture, 4 vols. 8vo. London, 1874–76.
• Festus (Sextus Pompeius), De Verborum Significatione, K. O. Müller. Lipsiæ, 1839. The Grammarian lived between a.d. 100 (Martial’s day) and a.d. 422 (under Theodosius II.).
• Ficke, Wörterbuch der Indo-germanischen Grundsprache, &c. Göttingen, 1868.
• Florus (Annæus: temp. Trajan), Rerum Romanarum libri IV., Delphin edit., 2 vols. 8vo. Londini, 1822.
• Fox (A. Lane-, now Major-General A. Pitt-Rivers). This distinguished student of Anthropology, who ranks foremost in the knowledge of early weapons, happily applied the idea of evolution, development, and progress to his extensive collection, the work of some thirty years. To show the successive steps he grouped his objects according to their forms and uses, beginning with the simplest; and to each class he appended an ideal type, towards which the primitive races were ever advancing, making innumerable mistakes, in some cases even retrograding, but on the whole attaining a higher plane. The papers from which I have quoted, often word for word, in my first chapters, are (1) ‘Primitive Warfare,’ sect. i., read on June 28, 1867 (pp. 1–35, with five plates), and Sect. ii., ‘On the Resemblance of the Weapons of Early Races, their Variations, Continuity, and Development of Form,’ read on June 5, 1868 (pp. 1–42, with eight diagrams); and (2) ‘Catalogue of the Anthropological Collection lent for Exhibition in the Bethnal Green Branch of the South Kensington Museum, with (131) Illustrations;’ pt. I. and II. (III. and IV. to be published hereafter), 1874, &c., 8vo., pp. 1–184. The collection, then containing some 14,000 objects, left Bethnal Green for the Western Galleries of the Museum in South Kensington. After a long sojourn there it was offered to the public; but England, unlike France, Germany, and Italy, has scant appreciation of anthropological study. At length it was presented to the University of Oxford, where a special building will be devoted to its worthy reception. I have taken the liberty of suggesting to General Pitt-Rivers that he owes the public not only the last two parts of his work, but also a folio edition with coloured illustrations of the humble ‘Catalogue.’
• Genthe (Dr. Hermann), a paper on ‘Etruscan Commerce with the North,’ Archiv für Anthrop., vol. vi. (from his work Ueber den estruskischen Tauschhandel nach Norden). Frankfurt, 1874.
• Gladstone (Right Hon. W. E.), Juventus Mundi, 1 vol. 8vo. London, 1869. ‘Metals in Homer,’ Contemporary Review, 1874.
• Glas (George), ‘The History of the Discovery and Conquest of the Canary Islands,’ Pinkerton, Voyages, vol. xvi.
• Goguet (Antoine Yves), De l’Origine des Lois, des Arts, et des Sciences, et de leur progrès chez les anciens peuples (par A. Y. G., aidé par Alex. Conr. Fugère), 3 vols., plates, 4to. Paris, 1758. Numerous editions and translations.
• Goguet (M. de), The Origin of Laws, Arts, and Sciences, and their progress among the most Ancient Nations. English translation by Thompson, 3 vols., plates, 8vo. Edinburgh, 1761.
• Gozzadini (Senator Count Giovanni), Di un antico sepolcro a Ceretolo nel Bolognese. Modena: Vincenzi, 1872. The author has taken a distinguished place in antiquarian anthropology by his various and valuable studies of Etruscan remains found in and around Felsina, now Bologna. I have ventured upon suggesting to him that these detached papers, mostly printed by Fava, Garagnani, and Co., of Bologna, should be collected and published in a handy form for the benefit of students.
• Graah (Captain W. A.), Narrative of an Expedition to the Eastern Coast of Greenland, &c. Translated from the Danish (Copenhagen, 1832) by C. Gordon Macdougall, 8vo. London, 1837.
• Grant (Captain, now Colonel, James A.), A Walk across Africa, or Domestic Scenes from my Nile Journal. Blackwoods: Edinburgh, mdccclxiv.
• Grose (Captain Francis), Military Antiquities respecting the History of the British Army. From the Conquest to the Present Time. A new edition with material additions and improvements, 2 vols. 8vo. London, printed for T. Egerton, Whitehall; and G. Kearsley, Fleet Street, 1801. The first edition appeared in 1786, and the learned author died (æt. 52) of apoplexy at Dublin, May 12, 1791.
• Grote (George), History of Greece, 12 vols. 8vo. 1846–56.
• Guthrie (Mrs.), My Year in an An Indian Fort. Hurst and Blackett: London, 1877.
• Hamilton (Will. J.), Researches in Asia Minor, Pontus, and Armenia, &c., 2 vols. 8vo. London: Murray, 1842.
• Hanbury (Daniel), Science Papers, &c., edited with Memoir by Joseph Ince, 1 vol. 8vo. London, 1876.
• Heath (Rev. Dunbar Isidore), Exodus Papyri, 8vo. London, 1855. Phœnician Inscriptions. London, Quaritch, 1873. ‘Hittite Inscriptions,’ Journ. Anthrop. Institute, May, 1880.
• Herodotus, Rawlinson’s, 4 vols. Murray, 1858. This valuable work wants a second edition revised.
• Herrera (Antonio, chief chronicler of the Indies), Historia Geral, &c., VIII. Decads, 4 vols. folio. Madrid, 1601.
• Hesiod, Opera et Dies; Scutum, &c. Poetæ Minores Græci, vol. i.
• Holub (Dr. Emil), Seven Years in South Africa, 2 vols. 8vo. Sampson Low and Co. 1881.
• Homer, Opera Omnia, by J. A. Ernesti. 5 vols. 8vo. Glasgow, 1814.
• Horatius, Opera Om., ex edit. Zeunii. Delphin edit., 4 vols. 8vo. Londini, 1825.
• Howorth (H. H.), ‘Archæology of Bronze.’ Trans. Ethno. Soc., vol. vi.
• Humboldt (Baron Alexander von), Personal Narrative of Travels to the Equinoctial Regions of America, 3 vols. 8vo. Bohn’s Scientific Library, London, 1852.
• Iron, an Illustrated Weekly Journal of Science, Metals, and Manufactures in iron and Steel, edited by Perry E. Nursey, C.E., to whom I have to express my thanks.
• Isidorus Hispalensis (Bishop of Seville, a.d. 600–636), Opera Omnia (including the ‘Origines’ and ‘Etymologies’), published by J. du Breul, fol. Parisiis, 1601.
• Jacquemin (Raphael), Histoire Générale du Costume, &c. Du IV^me au XIX^me Siècle (a.d. 315–1815). Paris.
• Jähns (Major Max), Handbuch einer Geschichte des Kriegswesens von der Urzeit an zur Renaissance. Technischer Theil: Bewaffnung, Kampfweise, Befestigung, Belagerung, Seewesen. Leipzig: Grunow, 1880. Major Jähns, an officer upon the General Staff of the German army, has produced in 1 vol. imp. 8vo. (pp. 640) a most laborious and useful work, accompanied by an atlas of one hundred carefully drawn plates. He quotes authorities literally by the hundred. The work amply deserves to be translated into English, but its public would, I fear, be very limited.
• Josephus (Flavius).
• Justinus (Frontinus). History, Fourth and Fifth Century, abridged from Trogus Pompeius.
• Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana, part i., with a preface and introduction. Printed for the Hindu Kama Shastra Society of London, 1883; for private circulation only. The poet whose name was Mallinaga or Mrillana (of the Vatsyayana family) lived between the first and sixth century of the Christian Æra. This, too, is only known by his poetry. Hindu-land is rich in Kama literature.
• Keller (Dr. Ferdinand), Die Kältischen Pfahlbauten in den Schweizer Seen. Zürich, 1854–66. There is an English translation The Lake Dwellings of Switzerland.
• King (late Dr. Richard), Trans. Ethnol. Soc., vols. i. and ii.
• Klemm (Dr. Gustav Friedrich), Werkzeuge und Waffen. Leipzig, 1854. An edition of Klemm’s (G. F.), Die Werkzeuge und Waffen, ihre Entstehung und Ausbildung, with 342 woodcuts in the text, 8vo. Published at Sondershausen, 1858. Allgemeine Culturwissenschaft, 2 vols. with woodcuts, 8vo. Leipzig, 1854–5.
• Kolben (Peter), Present State of the Cape of Good Hope, &c., 2 vols. 8vo., 1738.
• Kremer (Ritter Adolf von), Ibn Chaldun und seine Culturgeschichte. Wien, 1879.
• Lacombe, Les Armes et les Armures. Paris, 1868.
• Land and Water, weekly paper published by William Bates; it contains many articles by the late lamented Mr. Frank Buckland, F.Z.S.
• Latham (John): this ‘Assistant-Commissioner for Exhibitions’ (1862, 1867, and 1873), who succeeded in business Messrs. Wilkinson and Son of Pall Mall, and who lately died, gave me copies of his two excellent papers, (1) ‘The Shape of Sword-blades,’ and (2) ‘A Few Notes on Swords in the International Exhibition of 1862’ (Journal of the R.U.S. Institution, vols. vi. and vii.). With the author’s permission I have freely used these two valuable professional studies, especially in Chapter VII. The late Mr. Latham was a practical Swordsman, and his long experience as a maker of the ‘white arm’ renders his information thoroughly trustworthy. I wish every success to his son, who now fills his place in an establishment famous for turning out good work.
• Latham (Robert Gordon), Ethnology of the British Islands, 1 vol. 12mo. London, 1852. Descriptive Ethnology, 2 vols. 8vo. 1859.
• Layard (Sir Henry Austen), Nineveh and its Remains, 2 vols. 8vo., 1849. Monuments of Nineveh, 1st and 2nd Series, 1849–53. A Popular Account of Discoveries at Nineveh. London: Murray, 1851. Fresh Discoveries in the Ruins of Nineveh and Babylon, 1 vol. 8vo. London: Murray, 1853.
• Legge (Dr. James), The Chinese Classics, 3 vols. 8vo. London, 1861–76; vol. i., ‘Confucius’; ii., ‘Mencius’; iii., ‘She-King or Book of Poetry.’
• Lenormant (François), Manuel d’Histoire Ancienne de l’Orient, 2 vols., 12mo. Paris, 1868. Les Premières Civilisations, 3 vols. 12mo. Paris, 1874. Germ. Trans., Jena, 1875.
• Lepsius (Dr. Richard), Denkmäler aus Aegypten und Aethiopien nach den Zeichnungen der Preussischen Expedition. Denkmäler aus Aegypten und Aethiopien (1842–45). Berlin, 1849–59. Discoveries in Egypt, &c., translated by Kenneth R. H. Mackenzie, 8vo. London, 1852. Die Metalle in den Aegyptischen Inschriften (Akad. der Wiss., a.d. 1871), the latter translated into French 1877.
• Lindsey (Dr. W. Lauder), Proceedings of Society of Arts of Scotland, vol. v. 327.
• Livy.
• Lopez (Vicente Fidel), Les Races Aryennes du Pérou, &c. Paris: A. Franck, 1871. A copy was sent to me by my old friend John Coghlan, C.E., of Buenos Ayres.
• Lubbock (Sir John W.), Pre-historic Times, 1 vol. 8vo., 1865. Primitive Inhabitants of Scandinavia (Nillson’s), 3rd edit. London, 1868. Origin of Civilisation, &c., 8vo. London, 1870.
• Lucan.
• Lucretius.
• Luynes (Duc de), Numismatique et Inscriptions Cypriotes. Paris, 1852.
• Lyell (Sir Charles), Principles of Geology. London: Murray, 1830–3. The Antiquity of Man from Geological Evidences. London: Murray, 1863.
• Major (R. H.), The Select Letters of Columbus, &c. London: Hakluyt Soc., mdccclx.
• Manava-Dharma-Shástra (Laws of Menu), translated by Houghton. London, 1825.
• Manetho (b.c. 285).
• Marchionni (Alberto), Trattato di Scherma, &c. Firenze: Bencini, 1847.
• Markham (Clements R.), Pedro de Cieza (Cieça) de Leon, 1869. Commentaries of the Yncas, 1871. Reports on the Discovery of Peru, 1872. All printed by the Hakluyt Society.
• Massart (Alfred), Gisements Métallifères du district de Carthagène (Espagne). Liège, 1875.
• Massey (Gerald), A Book of the Beginnings. London: Williams and Norgate, 1881. Two volumes were first published, and the two concluding are lately issued. A learned friend writes to him: ‘I find little to remark upon or criticise. You seem to have got down far below Tylor, and to be making good your ground in many matters. If people will only read your book, it will make them cry out in some way or other. But you require a populariser, and may have to wait a long time for one.’
• Mela (Pomponius), De Situ Orbis (a.d. 41–54). This little work deserves a modern English translation; but what can be said of geographers whose Royal Geographical Society has not yet translated Ptolemy?
• Meyrick (Sir Samuel Rush), Critical Inquiry into Ancient Armour as it existed in Europe, particularly in Great Britain, from the Norman Conquest to Charles the Second, with a Glossary of Military Terms of the Middle Ages. I quote from the Second Edition. 3 vols. atlas 4to. London: Bohn, 1844. The first edition was published in 1824 without the supervision of the author, who found fault with it, especially with the colouring. The next edition, in 1844, was enlarged by the author with the assistance of friends, Mr. Albert Way and others. It was followed by Engraved Illustrations of Ancient Arms and Armour, the artistic work of Mr. Joseph Skelton.
• Milne (John), ‘On the Stone Age of Japan,’ Journ. Anthrop. Instit., May 1881.
• Mitchell (Dr. Arthur), ‘The Past in the Present,’ &c., Rhind Lectures, 1876–78, 1 vol. 8vo. Edinburgh: Douglas, 1880.
• Montaigne (Michel de), Essais, translated by William Hazlitt. London: C. Templeman, mdcccliii. (3rd edition).
• Monteiro and Gamitto, O Muata Cazembe, 1 vol. 8vo. Imprensa Nacional, Lisboa, 1854.
• Moore, Ancient Mineralogy.
• Moorcroft (William) and Trebeck (George), Travels in the Himalayan Provinces of Hindustan and Punjab, &c., from 1819 to 1825, 8vo. London: Murray, 1841.
• Morgan (Lewis), The League of the Iroquois.
• Mortot, ‘On the Swiss Lakes,’ Bulletin de la Société Vaudoise, vol. vi., &c. ‘Les Métaux dans l’Age du Bronze’ (Mém. Soc. Ant. du Nord, 1866–71).
• Mortillet (Gabriel de), ‘Les Gaulois de Marzabotto dans l’Apennin,’ Revue Archéologique, 1870–71. This anthropologist has published largely, and did good work at the Congress of Bologna.
• Movers, Die Phönizier. Berlin, 1840–56. The book is somewhat antiquated, but still valuable.
• Much (Dr. M.), ‘Ueber die Priorität des Eisens oder der Bronze in Ostasien,’ Trans. Anthrop. Soc. of Vienna, vol. ix. Separat-Abdruck.
• Müller (Prof. F. Max), Chips from a German Workshop, 2 vols. 8vo. London, 1867. Lectures on the Science of Language, 2 vols. 12mo. London, 1873 (7th edit.). Introduction to the Science of Religion, 12mo. London, 1873.
• Neuhoff, Travels in Brazil. Pinkerton, vol. xiv.
• Nillson (Prof. Sven), The Primitive Inhabitants of Scandinavia, translated by Sir John Lubbock. He is illustrated by Colonel A. Lane-Fox (Prim. Warf., p. 135) and by Wilde (Catalogue, &c.).
• Oldfield, ‘Aborigines of Australia,’ Trans. Ethnol. Soc., new series, vol. iii.
• Oppert (Professor), On the Weapons, &c., of the Ancient Hindus. London: Trübner, 1880.
• Opusculum Fidicularum, the Ancestry of the Violin, by Ed. Heron Allen. London: Mitchell and Hughes, 1882. The author kindly sent me a copy of his work.
• Orosius (Presbyter Paulus, a.d. 413), Historiarum Libri Septem. The Anglo-Saxon version of Aelfred the Great; translated, &c., by Daines Barrington, 1 vol. 8vo. London, 1773, and by Bosworth, 1859.
• Osburn (William), Monumental History of Egypt, 2 vols. 8vo. London, 1854.
• Owen (Prof. Richard), On the Anatomy of Vertebrates, 3 vols. 8vo. London, 1866–68.
• Palestine Exploration Fund, founded 1865; publishes Quarterly Statement. The Society’s office, 1 Adam Street, Adelphi, W.C.
• Palma (General Luigi di Cesnola), Cyprus, its Ancient Cities, Tombs, and Temples, 8vo. London: Murray, 1877. Cypern. Gena: Leipzig, 1879.
• Palma (Major di Cesnola), ‘On Phœnician Art in Cyprus,’ Brit. Archæol. Assoc., Dec. 6, 1882.
• Paterculus (C. Velleius, b.c. 19).
• Pausanias (temp. Antonin. Pius), Periegesis (or Itinerary) of Greece. The work of a good traveller, translated by Thomas Taylor, 3 vols. 8vo. London, 1824.
• Percy (Dr. John), Fuel, Fireclays, Copper, Zinc, Brass, &c. London: Murray, 1861. Metallurgy: Iron and Steel, ibid., 1864. Lead, 1870. Silver and Gold, part i., 1880. These works are too well known and too highly appreciated to be noticed except by name.
• Petherick (John), Egypt, the Soudan, and Central Africa, 8vo. Blackwoods, Edinburgh, mdccclxi. The late author was a Cornish miner who had the honesty not to find coal for Mohammed Ali Pasha of Egypt.
• Petronius Arbiter.
• Phillips (Prof. John A.), A Guide to Geology, 12mo. London, 1864. ‘A Manual of Metallurgy, or a Practical Treatise on the Chemistry of the Metals,’ illustrated. London, 1864: Archæological Journal, vol. xvi.
• Philo Judæus (a.d. 40).
• Pigafetta (Antonio, of Vicenza, who accompanied Magalhaens, the first circumnavigator, 1519–1522), Primo Viaggio intorno al Globo, 4to. Milan, 1800; published by Amoretti. He was best known before that date by Ramusio’s work.
• Polyænus the Macedonian dedicated his 8 books of 900 Στρατηγήματα to M. Aurelius and L. Verus (a.d. 163).
• Polybius (nat. circ. b.c. 204), Πραγματεία, not Historia. Historiarum quæ supersunt. Lips.: Holtze, 1866; 5 books and fragments out of 40. The writer was a captain in the field besides being an authority on military art, a politician, and a philosopher, who composed for instruction, not for amusement.
• Pollux (Julius, a.d. 183), Onomasticon.
• Porter (Rev. J. L.), author of A Handbook for Travellers in Syria and Palestine. London: Murray, 1868 (1st edition).
• Porter (Sir Robert Ker), Travels in Georgia, Persia, Armenia, Ancient Babylonia, &c. (1817–20), 2 vols. 4to. London: Longmans, 1821–22.
• Procopius (nat. circ. a.d. 500), Histories, &c.
• Ptolmey, Geographia.
• Ramusio (Giambattista, of Treviso, nat. 1485), Raccolta di Navigazioni e Viaggi, 3 vols. fol., 1550–59; the first collection of the kind, which gave rise to many others.
• Rawlinson (Canon George), The Five Great Monarchies of the Ancient Eastern World, &c., 4 vols. 8vo. London: Murray, 1862–66.
• Records of the Past, being English translations of the Assyrian and Egyptian monuments, published under the sanction of the Society of Biblical Archæology, vol. i. (of 12), 12mo. London, 1874.
• Revue Archéologique (under the direction of J. Gailhabaud), année 1–16. Paris, 1844–59, 8vo. Nouvelle Série, année 1, vol. i. &c., 1860, 8vo. Table Décennale, nouvelle série, 1860–1869, dressée par M. F. Delaunay. Paris, 1874, 8vo. In progress.
• Rhind (A. Henry), Thebes, its Tombs and their Tenants, &c. 1862.
• Richtofen (Baron Ferdinand von), China, Ergebnisse eigener Reisen und darauf gegründeter Studien. Vol. i. published in 1877; vol. ii. (4to.), Remier: Berlin, 1882. It has not yet found a translator.
• Rivero (Mariano y Eduardo de) y Tschudi (Juan Diego de), Antiguedades Peruanas, 1 vol. 4to., with Atlas. Vienna, 1851. Travels in Peru, by J. J. von Tschudi, in 1838–42; was translated from the German by T. Ross, 8vo. London, 1847.
• Rossellini (Prof.), I Monumenti dell’ Egitto e della Nubia. Pisa, 1832–41.
• Rossignol (J. P.), Les Métaux dans l’Antiquité. Paris: Durand, 1863.
• Roteiro (Ruttier) da Viagem de Vasco da Gama, corrected by the late Professor Herculano and Baron do Castello de Pavia. Imprensa Nacional, Lisboa, mdcccli. (2nd edition).
• Rougé (Vicomte E. de), Rituel Funéraire des Anciens Egyptiens, &c., imp. folio. Paris, 1861–66.
• Rougemont, L’Age de Bronze, 1866.
• Rowbotham (J. F.), ‘On the Art of Music in Prehistoric Times,’ Journ. Anthrop. Inst., May, 1881.
• Sacken (Baron E. von Osten-), Das Grabfeld von Hallstadt und dessen Alterthümer. Vienna, 1868.
• Sainte-Croix (Baron de), Recherches Historiques et Critiques sur les Mystères du Paganisme, revues et corrigées par Silvestre de Sacy, 2 vols. 8vo. Paris, 1817.
• Sallust.
• Sayce (Rev. A. H.), ‘On the Hamathite Inscriptions,’ Trans. Soc. Bibl. Archæol., vol. iv. part 1. Mr. Sayce has read other papers containing notices of more modern ‘Hittite’ finds; but I have failed to procure copies.
• Schliemann (Dr. Henry), Troy and its Remains, translated and edited by Philip Smith. London: Murray, 1875. Mycenæ and Tiryns, ibid. 1878. Ilios, ibid. 1880.
• Scott (Sir Sibbald David), The British Army, its Origin, Progress, and Development, 2 vols. London and New York: Cassell, Petter, & Galpin, 1868.
• Sévez, notice of Japanese Iron-works in Les Mondes, tome xxvi., Dec. 1871.
• Silius Italicus (nat. a.d. 25).
• Smith (Captain John), General Historie of Virginia, New England, and the Summer Isles, &c., fol. London: Pinkerton, xiii. He made his first voyage in 1606, and his second in 1614, when he changed ‘North Virginia’ into ‘New England.’ On his third (1615), he was captured by a Frenchman and landed at La Rochelle.
• Smith (George), Assyrian Discoveries. London: Sampson Low & Co., 6th edit., 1876. The learned author wore himself out by travel, and died young.
• Smith (Rev. W. Robertson), The Old Testament in the Jewish Church. Edinburgh: Blacks, 1881.
• Smith (Dr. William), Dictionaries. London: Taylor & Walton—
• • Greek and Roman Geography, 2 vols. 8vo. 1856–57.
  • Greek and Roman Antiquities, 1 vol. 8vo. 1859.
  • Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, 3 vols. 8vo. 1858–61.
  • Of the Bible, 3 vols. 8vo. 1863.
• Solinus (Ca. Jul. Polyhistor, alias ‘Pliny’s Ape’), Geographical Compendium.
• Speke (Captain James Hanning), Journal of the Discovery of the Source of the Nile. Edinburgh: Blackwoods, 1863.
• Spensley (Howard), Cenni sugli Aborigeni di Australasia, &c. Venezia: G. Fischer, 1881.
• Stade (Hans), The Captivity of Hans Stade, translated for the Hakluyt Society by Mr. Albert Tootal of Rio de Janeiro. London, 1874.
• Stanley (Henry M.), Through the Dark Continent, &c. London: Sampson Low, & Co., 1874.
• Stephens (J. Lloyd), Incidents of Travel in Central America, Chiapas, and Yucatan, 2 vols. 8vo. London: Murray, 1842. Germ. trans., Leipzig, 1843.
• Stevens (the late Edward T.), Flint Chips, a Guide to Prehistoric Archæology, as illustrated in the Blackmore Museum, Salisbury, 8vo. London: Bell and Daldy, 1870.
• Strabo (b.c. 54?).
• Suetonius (C. Tranquillus).
• Tacitus (Cornelius).
• Taylor (Rev. Isaac), Etruscan Researches. London: Macmillan, 1874.
• Texier, Description de l’Asie Mineure. Paris, 1849–52.
• Theophrastus (b.c. 305), Opera Græca et Latina, J. G. Schneider, 5 vols. 8vo. Lipsiæ, 1818–21.
• Tylor (E. B.), Anahuac. London, 1861. Primitive Culture. London: Murray, 1871 (Germ. trans., 1873). Researches into the Early History of Mankind and the Development of Civilisation, plates. London: Murray, 1870.
• Ure (Andrew), Dictionary of Arts, Manufactures, and Mines. London, 1863.
• Vallancey (General), Collectanea de Rebus Hibernicis, 6 vols. Dublin, 1770–1804.
• Varnhagen (the late F. Adolpho de): Historia Geral do Brazil, 2 vols. 8vo. Laemmert: Rio de Janeiro, 1854, Useful as ‘documents pour servir.’
• Varro (Terentius, nat. b.c. 116), De Lingua Latina.
• Vegetius (Fl. Renatus, a.d. 375–92), De Re Militari.
• Virgil.
• Vitruvius (M. Pollio, b.c. 46), Architecture, 5 vols. 4to. Utini, 1829.
• Volney (Const. F.), Œuvres, 8 vols. 8vo. Paris, 1826.
• Waitz (Professor, Dr. Theodor), Anthropologie der Naturvölker. Leipzig, 1859–72. The first volume, Introduction to Anthropology, was translated by J. F. Collingwood and published by the Anthropological Society of London, 8vo., Longmans, 1863. The manuscript of the second volume of this valuable work, also by Mr. Collingwood, was long in my charge; but the low state of anthropological study in England (and other pursuits unprofessional, and consequently non-paying) prevents its being printed.
• Wilde (Sir William R.), Descriptive Catalogue of the Antiquities in the Royal Irish Academy. Dublin: Academy House, 1863. A Descriptive Catalogue of Materials in the Royal Irish Academy, 8vo., 1857–61. It is regretable that part 1, vol. ii., of this admirable work, which has become a standard upon the subject, has not been printed; nor has the public been informed of any arrangements for publishing. For permission to make use of the cuts, which were obligingly furnished to Mr. Grego, I am indebted to the courtesy of the Council, Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland.
• Wilkinson (Sir J. Gardner), The Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians, their Private Life, Government, Laws, Arts, Religion, and History (originally written in 1836), 6 vols. 8vo. London: Murray, 1837–41. The author abridged his life-labour with the usual unsuccess, and called it A Popular Account of the Ancient Egyptians, 2 vols. post 8vo. London: Murray, 1874.
• Wilkinson (the late Henry, the eminent Sword-cutler in Pall Mall), Observations on Swords; to which is added Information for Officers going to join their Regiments in India. Pall Mall, London. No date.
• Willemin, Choix des Costumes Civiles et Militaires. Paris, 1798.
• Wilson (Daniel), Archæology and Prehistoric Annals of Scotland. Edinburgh: Sutherland and Knox, 8vo., mdcccli. Prehistoric Man, 2 vols. 8vo. London: Macmillan, 1862.
• Wright (the late Thomas), ‘On the True Assignation of the Bronze Weapons,’ &c., Trans. Ethno. Soc., new series, vol. iv.
• Woldrich (Prof. A.), Mittheilungen der Wien. Anthrop. Gesell. Wien, 1874.
• Wood (John George), Natural History of Man, being an Account of the Manners and Customs of the Uncivilised Ways of Men, 2 vols., 1868–70, 8vo.
• Worsäae (J. J. A.), Afbildninger fra det Kon. Mus. for Nordiske Oldsager i Kjöbnhavn, Ordnede og forklarede af J. J. A. W. (aided by Magnus Petersen and Aagaard). Kjöbnhavn: Kittendorf, and Aagaard, 1859. The order is in careful accordance with the Three Ages. Worsäae’s Prehistoric Annals of Denmark were translated by W. J. Knox, 8vo., London, 1849, and there is a Leitfaden der Nordischen Alterthumerskunde by Worsäae, Kopenhagen, 1837.
• Wurmbrand (Count Gutaker), Ergebnisse der Pfahlbauuntersuchungen. Wien, 1875.
• Yule (Colonel Henry), The Book of Marco Polo the Venetian, 2nd edit. London: Murray, 1875. The learned and exact writer favoured me with a copy of his admirable work, without which it is vain to read of ‘The Kingdoms and the Marvels of the East.’

CONTENTS.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

THE BOOK OF THE SWORD.

CHAPTER I.
PREAMBLE: ON THE ORIGIN OF WEAPONS.

Man’s civilisation began with Fire—how to light it and how to keep it lit. Before he had taken this step, our primal ancestor (or ancestors) evidently led the life of the lower animals. The legend of ‘Iapetus’ bold son’ Prometheus, like many others invented by the Greeks, or rather borrowed from Egypt, contained under the form of fable a deep Truth, a fact, a lesson valuable even in these days. ‘Forethought,’ the elder brother of ‘Afterthought,’ brought down the semina flammæ in a hollow tube from Heaven, or stole it from the chariot of the Sun. Here we have the personification of the Great Unknown, who, finding a cane-brake or a jungle tree fired by lightning or flamed by wind-friction, conceived the idea of feeding the σπέρμα πυρὸς with fuel. Thus Hermes or Mercury was ‘Pteropédilos’ or ‘Alipes;’ and his ankles were fitted with ‘Pedila’ or ‘Talaria,’ winged sandals, to show that the soldier fights with his legs as well as with his arms.[3]

I will not enlarge upon the imperious interest of Hoplology: the history of arms and armour, their connection and their transitions, plays the most important part in the annals of the world.

The first effort of human technology was probably weapon-making. History and travel tell us of no race so rude as to lack artificial means of offence and defence.[4] To these, indeed, man’s ingenuity and artistic efforts must, in his simple youthtide, have been confined. I do not allude to the complete man, created full-grown in body and mind by the priestly castes of Egypt, Phœnicia, Judæa, Assyria, Persia, and India. The Homo sapiens whom we have to consider is the ‘Adam Kadmon,’[5] not of the Cabbalist, but of the anthropologist, as soon as he raised himself above the beasts of the field by superiority of brains and hands.

The lower animals are born armed, but not weaponed. The arm, indeed, is rather bestial than human: the weapon is, speaking generally, human, not bestial. Naturalists have doubted, and still doubt, whether in the so-called natural state the lower animals use weapons properly so termed. Colonel A. Lane Fox, a diligent student of primitive warfare, and a distinguished anthropologist,[6] distinctly holds the hand-stone to be the prehistoric weapon. He quotes (Cat. pp. 156–59) the ape using the hand-stone to crack nutshells; the gorillas defending themselves against the Carthaginians of Hanno; and Pedro de Cieza (Cieça) de Leon[7] telling us that ‘when the Spaniards [in Peru] pass under the trees where the monkeys are, these creatures break off branches and throw them down, making faces all the time.’ Even in the days of Strabo (xv. 1) it was asserted that Indian monkeys climb precipices, and roll down stones upon their pursuers—a favourite tactic with savages. Nor, indeed, is it hard to believe that the Simiads, whose quasi-human hand has prehensile powers, bombard their assailants with cocoa-nuts and other missiles. Major Denham (1821–24), a trustworthy traveller, when exploring about Lake Chad, says of the quadrumans of the Yeou country: ‘The monkeys, or, as the Arabs say, men enchanted (Beny Adam meshood),[8] were so numerous that I saw upwards of a hundred and fifty assembled at one place in the evening. They did not appear at all inclined to give up their ground, but, perched on the top of a bank some twenty feet high, made a terrible noise, and, rather gently than otherwise, pelted us as we approached within a certain distance.’ Herr Holub,[9] also, was ‘designedly aimed at by a herd of African baboons perched among the trees;’ and on another occasion he and his men had to beat an ignominious retreat from ‘our cousins.’ ‘Hence,’ suggests Colonel A. Lane Fox, ‘our “poor relation” conserves, even when bred abroad and in captivity, the habit of violently shaking the branch by jumping upon it with all its weight, in order that the detached fruit may fall upon the assailant’s head.’ In Egypt, as we see from the tomb-pictures, monkeys (baboons or cynocephali) were taught to assist in gathering fruit, and in acting as torch-bearers. While doing this last duty, their innate petulance caused many a merry scene.[10]

I never witnessed this bombardment by monkeys. But when my regiment was stationed at Baroda in Gujarát, several of my brother officers and myself saw an elephant use a weapon. The intelligent animal, which the natives call Háthi (‘the handed’[11]), was chained to a post during the dangerous season of the wet forehead, and was swaying itself in ill-temper from side to side. Probably offended by the sudden appearance of white faces, it seized with its trunk a heavy billet, and threw it at our heads with a force and a good will that proved the worst intention.

According to Captain Hall—who, however, derived the tale from the Eskimos,[12] the sole living representatives of the palæolithic age in Europe—the polar bear, traditionally reported to throw stones, rolls down, with its quasi-human forepaws, rocks and boulders upon the walrus when found sleeping at the foot of some overhanging cliff. ‘Meister Petz’ aims at the head, and finally brains the stunned prey with the same weapon. Perhaps the account belongs to the category of the ostrich throwing stones, told by many naturalists, including Pliny (x. 1), when, as Father Lobo explained in his ‘Abyssinia,’ the bird only kicks them up during its scouring flight. Similar, too, is the exploded shooting-out of the porcupine’s quills, whereby, according to mediæval ‘Shoe-tyes’[13] men have been badly hurt and even killed. On the other hand, the Emu kicks like an Onager[14] and will drive a man from one side of a quarter-deck to the other.

But though Man’s first work was to weapon himself, we must not believe with the Cynics and the Humanitarians that his late appearance in creation, or rather on the stage of life, initiated an unvarying and monotonous course of destructiveness. The great tertiary mammals which preceded him, the hoplotherium, the deinotherium, and other -theria, made earth a vast scene of bloodshed to which his feeble powers could add only a few poor horrors. And even in our day the predatory fishes, that have learned absolutely nothing from man’s inhumanity to man, habitually display as much ferocity as ever disgraced savage human nature.

Primitive man—the post-tertiary animal—was doomed by the very conditions of his being and his media to a life of warfare; a course of offence to obtain his food, and of defence to retain his life. Ulysses[15] says pathetically:

No thing frailer of force than Man earth breedeth and feedeth;

Man ever feeblest of all on th’ Earth’s face creeping and crawling.

The same sentiment occurs in the ‘Iliad’; and Pliny, the pessimist, writes—‘the only tearful animal, Man.’

The career of these wretches, who had neither ‘minds’ nor ‘souls,’ was one long campaign against ravenous beasts and their ‘brother’ man-brutes. Peace was never anything to them but a fitful interval of repose. The golden age of the poets was a dream; as Videlou remarked, ‘Peace means death for all barbarian races.’ The existence of our earliest ancestors was literally the Battle of Life. Then, as now, the Great Gaster was the first Master of Arts, and War was the natural condition of humanity upon which depends the greater part of its progress, its rising from the lower to the higher grade. Hobbism, after all, is partly right: ‘Men were by nature equal, and their only social relation was a state of war.’ Like the children of our modern day, helpless and speechless, primæval Homo possessed, in common with his fellow-creatures, only the instincts necessary for self-support under conditions the most facile. Uncultivated thought is not rich in the productive faculty; the brain does not create ideas: it only combines them and evolves the novelty of deduction, and the development of what is found existing. Similarly in language, onomatopœia, the imitation of natural sounds, the speech of Man’s babyhood, still endures; and to it we owe our more picturesque and life-like expressions. But, despite their feeble powers, compulsory instruction, the Instructor being Need, was continually urging the Savage and the Barbarian to evolve safety out of danger, comfort out of its contrary.

For man, compelled by necessity of his nature to weapon himself, bears within him the two great principles of Imitation and Progress. Both are, after a fashion, his peculiar attributes, being rudimentary amongst the lower animals, though by no means wholly wanting. His capacity of language, together with secular development of letters and literature, enabled him to accumulate for himself, and to transmit to others, a store of experience acquired through the medium of the senses; and this, once gained, was never wholly lost. By degrees immeasurably slower than among civilised societies, the Savage digested and applied to the Present and to the Future the hoarded wisdom of the Past. The imitative faculty, a preponderating advantage of the featherless biped over the quadruped, taught the former, even in his infancy, to borrow ad libitum, while he lent little or nothing. As a quasi-solitary Hunter[16] he was doomed to fray and foray, to destroying others in order to preserve himself and his family: a condition so constant and universal as to include all others. Become a Shepherd, he fought man and beast to preserve and increase his flocks and herds; and rising to an Agriculturist, he was ever urged to break the peace by greed of gain, by ambition, and by the instinctive longing for excitement.[17]

But there was no absolute point of separation, as far as the material universe is concerned, to mark the dawn of a new ‘creative period’; and the Homo Darwiniensis made by the Aristotle of our age, the greatest of English naturalists, is directly connected with the Homo sapiens. There are hosts of imitative animals, birds as well as beasts; but the copying-power is essentially limited. Moreover, it is ‘instinctive,’ the work of the undeveloped, as opposed to ‘reasoning,’ the process of the highly-developed brain and nervous system. Whilst man has taught himself to articulate, to converse, the dog, which only howled and whined, has learned nothing except to bark. Man, again, is capable of a development whose bounds we are unable to determine; whereas the beast, incapable of self-culture, progresses, under the most favourable circumstances, automatically and within comparatively narrow bounds.

Upon the imitative faculty and its exercise I must dwell at greater length. It is regretable that the delicious wisdom of Pope neglected to point out the great lesson of the animal-world in suggesting and supplying the arts of offence and defence:—

Go, from the creatures thy instructions take...

Thy arts of building from the bee receive;

Learn from the mole to plough, the worm to weave;

Learn from the little nautilus to sail,

Spread the thin oar, and catch the driving gale.[18]

Man, especially in the tropical and sub-tropical zones—his early, if not his earliest, home, long ago whelmed beneath the ocean waves—would derive many a useful hint from the dreadful armoury of equinoctial vegetation; the poison-trees, the large strong spines of the Acacia and the Mimosa, e.g. the Wait-a-bit (Acacia detinens), the Gleditschia, the Socotrine Aloe, the American Agave, and the piercing thorns of the Caryota urens, and certain palms. The aboriginal races would be further instructed in offensive and defensive arts by the powerful and destructive feræ of the sunny river-plains, where the Savage was first induced to build permanent abodes.

DISTRIBUTION OF WEAPONS.

Before noting the means of attack and protection which Nature suggested, we may distribute Hoplology, the science of arms and weapons of offence and defence, human and bestial, into two great orders, of which the latter can be subdivided into four species:—

1. Missile.
2. Armes d’hast.—a. Percussive or striking; b. Thrusting, piercing, or ramming; c. Cutting or ripping; d. Notched or serrated.

Colonel A. Lane Fox (‘Prim. Warfare,’ p. 11) thus classifies the weapons of ‘Animals and Savages’:—

My list is less comprehensive, and it bears only upon the origin of the Arme blanche.

I. As has been said, the missile, the βέλος, is probably the first form of weapon, and is still the favourite with savage Man. It favours the natural self-preservative instinct. El-Khauf maksúm—‘fear is distributed,’—say the Arabs. ‘The shorter the weapon the braver the wielder’ has become a well-established fact. The savage Hunter, whose time is his own, would prefer the missile; but the Agriculturist, compelled to be at home for seed-time and harvest, would choose the hand-to-hand weapon which shortens action. We may hold, without undue credulity, that the throwing-arm is common to beasts, after a fashion, and to man. Among the so-called ‘missile fishes’[19] the Toxotes,[20] or Archer, unerringly brings down insects with a drop of water when three or four feet high in the air. The Chætodon, or archer fish of Japan, is kept in a glass vase, and fed by holding flies at the end of a rod a few inches above the surface: it strikes them with an infallible aim. This process is repeated, among the mammalia, by the Llama, the Guanaco and their congeners, who propel their acrid and fetid saliva for some distance and with excellent aim.[21] And stone-throwing held its own for many an age, as we read in the fifteenth century:—

Use eke the cast of stone with slynge or honde;

It falleth ofte, yf other shot there none is,

Men harneysèd in steel may not withstonde

The multitude and mighty cast of stonys.[22]

II. The stroke or blow which led to the cut would be seen exemplified in the felidæ, by the terrible buffet of the lion, by the clawing of the tiger and the bear, and by the swing of the trunk of the ‘half-reasoner with the hand.’ Man also would observe that the zebra and the quagga (so called from its cry, wag-ga, wag-ga[23]), the horse and the ass, the camel, the giraffe, and even the cow, defend themselves with the kick or hoof-blow; while the ostrich, the swan, and the larger birds of prey assault with a flirt or stroke of the wing. The aries or sea-ram (Delphinus orca) charges with a butt. The common whale raises the head with such force that it has been held capable of sinking a whaler: moreover, this mammal uses the huge caudal fin or tail in battle with man and beast; for instance, when engaged with the fox-shark or thresher (Carcharias vulpes).[24] These, combined with the force of man’s doubled fist, would suggest the ‘noble art’ of boxing: it dates from remote antiquity; witness the cestus or knuckle-duster of the classics, Greeks, Romans, and Lusitanians. So far from being confined to Great or Greater Britain, as some suppose, it is still a favourite not only with the Russian peasants, but also with the Hausas, Moslem negroids who did such good service in the Ashanti war. A curious survival of the feline armature is the Hindu’s Wágh-nakh. Following Demmin, Colonel A. Lane Fox[25] was in error when he described this ‘tiger’s-claw’ as ‘an Indian weapon of treachery belonging to a secret society, and invented about a.d. 1659.’ Demmin[26] as erroneously attributes the Wágh-nakh to Sívají, the Prince of Maráthá-land in Western India, who traitorously used it upon Afzal Khan, the Moslem General of Aurangzeb, sent (a.d. 1659) to put down his rebellion.[27] A meeting of the chiefs was agreed upon, and the Moslem, quitting his army, advanced with a single servant; he wore a thin robe, and carried only a straight sword. Sívají, descending from the fort, assumed a timid and hesitating air, and to all appearance was unarmed. But he wore mail under his flimsy white cotton coat, and besides a concealed dagger, he carried his ‘tiger’s-claw.’ The Khan looked with contempt at the crouching and diminutive ‘mountain rat,’ whom the Moslems threatened to bring back in cages; but, at the moment of embracing, the Maráthá struck his Wágh-nakh into his adversary’s bowels and despatched him with his dagger. The Wágh-nakh in question is still kept as a relic, I am told, by the Bhonslá family.[28] Outside the hand you see nothing but two solid gold rings encircling the index and the minimus; these two are joined inside by a steel bar, which serves as a connecting base to three or four sharp claws, thin enough to fit between and to be hidden by the fingers of a half-closed hand. The attack is by ripping open the belly: and I have heard of a poisoned Wágh-nakh which may have been suggested by certain poison rings in ancient and mediæval Europe.[29] The date of invention is absolutely unknown, and a curious and instructive modification of it was made by those Indians-in-Europe, the Gypsies.

Fig. 1.—Indian Wágh-nakh.

Fig. 2.—Wágh-nakh, used by Maráthás (India Museum.)

III. The thrust would be suggested by the combats of the goat, the stag, and black cattle, including the buffalo and the wild bull, all of which charge at speed with the head downwards, and drive the horns into the enemy’s body. The gnu (Catoblepas G.) and other African antelopes, when pressed by the hunter, keep him at bay with the point. In Europe ‘hurt of hart,’ a ripping and tearing thrust, has brought many a man to the grave. The hippopotamus, a dangerous animal unduly despised, dives under the canoe, like the walrus, rises suddenly, and with its lower tusks, of the hardest ivory, drills two holes in the offending bottom. The black rhinoceros, fiercest and most irritable of African fauna, though graminivorous, has one or two horns of wood-like fibre-bundles resting upon the strongly-arched nasal bones, and attached by an extensive apparatus of muscles and tendons. This armature, loose when the beast is at peace, becomes erect and immovable in rage, thus proving in a special manner its only use—that of war. It is a formidable dagger that tears open the elephant and passes through the saddle and its padding into the ribs of a horse. The extinct sabre-toothed tiger (Machairodus latidens), with one incisor and five canines, also killed with a thrust. So, amongst birds, the bittern, the peacock, and the American white crane peck or stab at the eye; the last-named has been known to drive its long sharp mandibles deep into the pursuer’s bowels, and has been caught by presenting to it a gun-muzzle; the bird, mistaking the hole, strikes at it and is caught by the beak.[30] The hern defends herself during flight by presenting the sharp long beak to the falcon. The pheasant and partridge, the domestic cock and quail, to mention no others, use their spurs with a poniard’s thrust; the Argus-pheasant of India, the American Jacaná (Parra), the horned screamer (Palamedea), the wing-wader of Australia (Gregory), and the plover of Central Africa (Denham and Claperton), carry weapons upon their wings.

THE ARMS OF ANIMALS.

Fig. 3.

1. Balistes Capriscus;
2. Cottus Diceraus;
3. Naseus Fronticornis.

According to Pliny (viii. 38) the dolphins which enter the Nile are armed with a knife-edged spur on the back to protect themselves from the crocodiles. Cuvier refers this allusion to the Squalus centrina or Spinax of Linnæus. The European ‘file-fish’ (Balistes capriscus), found in a fossil state, and still existing, though rare in British waters, remarkably shows the efficiency, beauty, and variety of that order’s armature. It pierces its enemy from beneath by a strong erectile and cirrated spine on the first anterior dorsal; the base of the spear is expanded and perforated, and a bolt from the supporting plate passes freely through it. When the spine is raised, a hollow at the back receives a prominence from the next bony ray, which fixes the point in an erect position. Like the hammer of a fire-piece at full cock, the spear cannot be forced down till the prominence is withdrawn, as by pulling the trigger. This mechanism, says the learned and experienced Professor Owen,[31] may be compared with the fixing and unfixing of a bayonet: when the spine is bent down it is received into a groove in the supporting plate, and thus it offers no impediment to swimming.

Fig. 4.—1. Spear of Narwhal; 2. Sword of Xiphias; 3. Rhinoceros-Horn; 4. Walrus Tusks.

Fig. 5.—Narwhal’s Sword Piercing Plank.

Fig. 6.—Metal Daggers with Horn Curve.

The pugnacious and voracious little ‘stickleback’ (Gasterosteus) is similarly provided. The ‘bull-head’ (Cottus diceraus, Pallas[32]) bears a multibarbed horn on its dorsum, exactly resembling the spears of the Eskimos and the savages of South America and Australia. The yellow-bellied ‘surgeon’ or lancet-fish (Acanthurus) is armed, in either ocean, with a long spine on each side of the tail; with this lance it defends itself dexterously against its many enemies. The Naseus fronticornis (Lacépède) bears, besides the horn-muzzle, trenchant spear-formed blades in the pointed and serrated tail. The sting-fish or adder-pike (Trachinus vipera) has necessitated amputation of the wounded limb: the dorsals, as well as the opercular spines, have deep double grooves in which the venomous mucous secretion is lodged—a hint to dagger-makers. The sting-rays (Raia trygon and R. histrix[33]) twist the long slender tail round the object of attack and cut the surface with the strong notched and spiny edge, inflicting a wound not easily healed. The sting, besides being poisonous, has the especial merit of breaking off in the wound: it is extensively used by the savages of the Fiji, the Gambier, and the Pellew Islands, of Tahiti, Samoa, and many of the Low Islands.[34] These properties would suggest poisoned weapons which cannot be extracted. Such are the arrows of the Bushman, the Shoshoni, and the Macoinchi of Guiana, culminating in the highly-civilised stiletto of hollow glass.

Fig. 7.—Mádu or Máru.

The sword-fish (Xiphias), although a vegetable feeder, is mentioned by Pliny (xxxii. 6) as able to sink a ship. It is recorded to have killed a man when bathing in the Severn near Worcester. It attacks the whale, and it has been known to transfix a vessel’s side with its terrible weapon. The narwhal or sea-unicorn (Monodon monoceros) carries a formidable tusk, a Sword-blade of the same kind similarly used.[35]

Here may be offered a single proof how Man, living among, and dependent for food upon, the lower animals, borrowed from their habits and experience his earliest practice of offence and defence. The illustration represents a ‘Singhauta,’[36] ‘Mádu’ or ‘Máru’ (double dagger), made from the horns of the common Indian antelope, connected by crossbars. In its rude state, and also tipped with metal, it is still used as a weapon by the wild Bhíls, and as a crutch and dagger by the Jogis (Hindús) and Fakirs (Hindís or Moslems), both orders of religious mendicants who are professionally forbidden to carry secular arms. It also served for defence, like the parrying-stick of Africa and Australia, till it was fitted with a hand-guard, and the latter presently expanded into a circular targe of metal. This ancient instrument, with its graceful curves, shows four distinct stages of development: first, the natural, and, secondly, the early artificial, with metal caps to make it a better thrusting weapon. The third process was to forge the whole of metal; and the fourth and final provided it with a straight, broad blade, springing at right angles from the central grip. This was the ‘Adaga’[37] of mediæval writers.

Fig. 8.—The Adaga.

IV. The first idea of a trenchant or cutting instrument would be suggested by various reeds and grasses; their silicious leaves at certain angles cleave to the bone, as experience has taught most men who have passed through a jungle of wild sugar-cane. When full-grown the plants stand higher than a man’s head, and the flint-edged leaves disposed in all directions suggest a labyrinth of sword-blades. Thus the Mawingo-wingo (Pennisetum Benthami), like the horse-tail or ‘shave-grass’ of Spain, was used as knives by the executioners of Kings Sunna and Mtesa of Uganda, when cutting the human victims to pieces.[38] Of the same kind are the ‘sword-grass’ and the ‘bamboo-grass.’ Many races, especially the Andamanese and the Polynesian Islanders, make useful blades of the split and sharpened bamboo: they are fashioned from the green plant, and are dried and charred to sharpen the edge. Turning to the animal world, the cassowary tears with a forward cut, and the wounded coot scratches like a cat. The ‘old man kangaroo,’ with the long nail of the powerful hind leg, has opened the stomach of many a staunch hound. The wild boar attacks with a thrust, followed by a rip, cutting scientifically from below upwards. This, as will appear, is precisely the plan adopted by certain ancient forms of sabre, Greek and barbarian, the cutting edges being inside, not outside, the curve. I may add that the old attack is one of our latest improvements in broadsword exercise.[39]

The offensive weapon of the sting-ray, and of various insects, as well as the teeth of all animals, man included, furnish models for serrated or saw-edged instruments. Hence Colonel A. Lane Fox observes:[40] ‘It is not surprising that the first efforts of mankind in the construction of trenchant instruments should so universally consist of teeth, or flint-flakes, arranged along the edge of staves.’ But evidently the knife preceded the saw, which is nothing but a knife-blade jagged. Other familiar instances would be the multibarb stings of insects, especially that of the common bee. Again, we have the mantis, an orthopter of the Temperates and the Tropics, whose fights, enjoyed by the Chinese, are compared with the duels of sabrers. For the rasping blow and parry they use the forearm, which carries rows of strong sharp spines; and a happy stroke beheads or bisects the antagonist. To this category belongs the armature of the saw-fish (Pristis), a shark widely distributed and haunting the arctic, temperate, and tropical seas. Its mode of offence is to spring high from the water and to fall upon the foe, not with the point, but with either edge of its formidable arm: the row of strong and trenchant barbs, set like teeth, cuts deeply into the whale’s flesh. Hence, in New Guinea, the serrated blade becomes a favourite Sword, the base of the snout being cut and rounded so as to form a handle.

Fig. 9.—Serrated or Multibarbed Weapons.
1. Sting of the common Bee; 2. Sting of Ray.

Fig. 10.—Weapons made of Sharks’ Teeth.

Fig. 11.—Italian Dagger, with Grooves and Holes for Poison.

Fig. 12.—Sword with Serrated Blade of Saw-fish.

Thus man, essentially a tool-making animal, and compelled by the conditions of his being to one long battle with the brute creation, was furnished by his enemies, not only with models of implements and instruments, and with instructions to use them, from witnessing the combats of brutes, but actually with their arms, which he converted to his own purposes. Hence the weapon and the tool were, as a rule, identical in the hands of primæval man; and this forms, perhaps, the chief test of a primitive invention. The earliest drift-flints ‘were probably used as weapons both of war and the chase, to grub roots, to cut down trees, and to scoop out canoes.’[41] The Watúsi of Eastern Africa make their baskets with their sharpened spear-heads; and the so-called Káfirs (Amazulu, &c.) still shave themselves with the assegai. Hence, too, as like conditions engender like results, the arms and implements of different races resemble one another so closely as to suggest a common origin and actual imitation, even where copying was, so to speak, impossible.

Let us take as an instance two of the most widespread of weapons. The blow-pipe’s progressive form has been independently developed upon a similar plan, with distinctly marked steps, in places the most remote.[42] Another instance is the chevaux-de-frise, the spikes of metal familiar to the classics.[43] They survive in the caltrops or bamboo splints planted in the ground by the barefooted Mpangwe (Fans) of Gaboon-land and by the Rangos of Malacca.

In the early days of anthropological study we read complaints that ‘it is impossible to establish, amongst the implements of modern savages, a perfectly true sequence,’ although truth may be arrived at in points of detail; and that ‘in regard to the primary order of development, much must still be left open to conjecture.’ But longer labour and larger collections have lately added many a link to the broken chain of continuity. We can now trace with reasonable certainty the tardy progress of evolution which, during a long succession of ages, led to the systematised art of war. The conditions of the latter presently allowed society periods of rest, or rather of recovery; and more leisure for the practice which, in weapons as in other things, ‘maketh perfect.’[44] And man has no idea of finality: he will stop short of nothing less than the absolutely perfect. He will labour at the ironclad as he did the canoe; at the fish-torpedo as he did the petard.[45]

ARMS AND ARTS.

From the use of arms, also, arose the rudimentary arts of savage man. Music began when he expressed his joy and his sorrow by cries of emotion—the voice being the earliest, as it is still the best, of music-makers. It was followed by its imitations, which pass through three several stages, and even now we know nothing more in the way of development.[46] When the savage clapped together two clubs he produced the first or drum-type; when he hissed or whistled he originated the pipe-type (syrinx, organ, bagpipe, &c.); and the twanging of his bow suggested the lyre-type, which we still find—‘tickling the dried guts of a mewing cat.’[47] Painting and sculpture were the few simple lines drawn and cut upon the tomahawk or other rude weapon-tool. ‘As men think and live so they build,’ said Herder; and architecture, which presently came to embrace all the other arts, dawned when the Savage attempted to defend and to adorn his roost among the tree branches or the entrance to his cave-den.[48]

After this preamble, which has been longer than I expected, we pass to the first or rudest forms of the Weapons Proper used by Savage Man.

CHAPTER II.
MAN’S FIRST WEAPONS—THE STONE AND THE STICK. THE EARLIEST AGES OF WEAPONS. THE AGES OF WOOD, OF BONE, AND OF HORN.

What, then, was Man’s first weapon? He was born speechless and helpless, inferior to the beasts of the field. He grew up armed, but badly armed. His muscles may have been stronger than they are now; his poor uneducated fisticuff, however, could not have compared with the kick of an ass. As we see from the prognathous jaw, he could bite, and his teeth were doubtless excellent[49]; still, the size and shape of the maxilla rendered it an arm inferior to the hyæna’s and even to the dog’s. He scratched and tore, as women still do; but his nails could hardly have been more dangerous than the claws of the minor felines.

He had, however, the hand, the most perfect of all prehensile contrivances, and Necessity compelled him to use it. The stone, his first ‘weapon,’ properly so called, would serve him in two ways—as a missile, and as a percussive instrument. Our savage progenitor, who in days long before the dawn of history, contracted the extensor and relaxed the flexor muscles of his arm when flinging into air what he picked up from the ground, was unconsciously lengthening his reach and taking the first step in the art and science of ballistics. His descendants would acquire extraordinary skill in stone-throwing, and universal practice would again make perfect. Diodorus of Sicily (b.c. 44),[50] who so admirably copied Herodotus, says that the Libyans ‘use neither Swords, spears, nor other weapons; but only three darts and stones in certain leather budgets, wherewith they fight in pursuing and retreating.’ The Wánshi (Guanches) Libyan or Berber peoples of the Canarian Archipelago, according to Cà da Mosto (a.d. 1505), confirmed by many, including George Glas,[51] were expert stone-throwers. They fought their duels ‘in the public place, where the combatants mounted upon two stones placed at the opposite sides of it, each stone being flat at top and about half a yard in diameter. On these they stood fast without moving their feet, till each had thrown three round stones at his antagonist. Though they were good marksmen, yet they generally avoided those missive weapons by the agile writhing of their bodies. Then arming themselves with sharp flints (obsidian?) in their left hands, and cudgels or clubs in their right, they fell on, beating and cutting each other till they were tired.’ An instance is mentioned in which a Guanche brought down with a single throw a large palm-frond, whose mid-rib was capable of resisting the stroke of an axe. Kolben, who wrote about a century and a half ago, gives the following account of the ape-like gestures of the Khoi-Khoi or Hottentots[52]:—‘The most surprising strokes of their dexterity are seen in their throwing of a stone. They hit a mark to a miracle of exactness, though it be a hundred paces distant and no bigger than a halfpenny. I have beheld them at this exercise with the highest pleasure and astonishment, and was never weary of the spectacle. I still expected after repeated successes, that the stone would err; but I expected in vain. Still went the stone right to the mark, and my pleasure and astonishment were redoubled. You could imagine that the stone was not destined to err, or that you were not destined to see it. But a Hottentot’s unerring hand in this exercise is not the only wonder of the scene; you would be equally struck perhaps with the manner in which he takes his aim. He stands, not still with a lift-up arm and a steady staring eye upon the mark, as we do; but is in constant motion, skipping from one side to another, suddenly stooping, suddenly rising; now bending on this side, now on that; his eyes, hands, and feet are in constant action, and you would think that he was playing the fool, and minding anything else than his aim; when on a sudden, away goes the stone with a fury, right to the heart of the mark, as if some invisible power had directed it.’

Nearer home the modern Syrians still preserve their old dexterity: I have often heard the tale, and have no reason to doubt its truth, of a brown bear (Ursus syriacus) being killed in the Libanus by a blow between the eyes.[53] When the Arab Bedawin are on the raid and do not wish to use their matchlocks, they attack at night, and ‘rain stones’ upon the victim. The latter vainly discharges his ammunition against the shadows flitting ghost-like among the rocks; and, when his fire is drawn, the murderers rush in and finish their work. The use of the stone amongst the wild tribes of Asia, Africa, and America is almost universal. In Europe, the practice is confined to schoolboys; but the wild Irish, by beginning early, become adepts in it when adults. As a rule, the shepherd is everywhere a skilful stone-thrower.

Turner makes the ‘Kawas’ of Tanna, New Hebrides, a stone as long as, and twice as thick as, an ordinary counting-house ruler: it is thrown with great precision for a distance of twenty yards. The same author mentions stones rounded like a cannon-ball, among the people of Savage Island and Eromanga. Commander Byron notices the stones made into missiles by the Disappointment Islanders. Beechey, whose party was attacked by the Easter Islanders, says that the weapons, cast with force and accuracy, knocked several of the seamen under the boat-thwarts. Crantz tells us that Eskimo children are taught stone-throwing at a mark as soon as they can use their hands. The late Sir R. Schomburg describes a singular custom amongst the Demarara Indians. When a child enters boyhood he is given a hard round stone which he is to hand-rub till it becomes smooth, and he often reaches manhood before the task is done. Observers have suggested that the only use of the practice is a ‘lesson in perseverance, which quality, in the opinion of many people, is best inculcated by engaging the minds of youths in matters that are devoid of any other incentive in the way of practical utility or interest.’

Fig. 13.—Ancient Egyptians Throwing Knives.

In more civilised times the knife, as a missile, would take the place of the stone. We find that the ancient Egyptians[54] practised at a wooden block, and the German Helden (champions), seated on settles, duelled by casting three knives each, to be parried with the shield. The modern Spaniards begin to learn when children the art of throwing the facon[55], cuchillo or clasp-knife. The reapers of the Roman Campagna, mere barbarians once civilised, also ‘chuck’ the sickle with a surprising precision.

THE BOW.

The habit of stone-throwing would presently lead to the invention of the sling, which Meyrick considers,[56] strange to say, the ‘earliest and simplest weapon of antiquity.’ The rudest form of this pastoral weapon used only on open plains, a ball and cord, was followed by the various complications of string- or thong-sling, cup-sling, and stick-sling. The latter, a split stick which held the stone till the moment of discharge, may have been the primitive arm: Lepsius shows an Egyptian using such a sling and provided with a reserve heap of pebbles. Nilsson suggests that David was thus weaponed when Goliath addressed him, ‘Am I a dog that thou comest to me with staves?’—that is, with the shepherd’s staff turned into a sling. And this form survived longest in the Roman ‘fustibulus,’ which the moderns corrupted to ‘fustibale’[57]: the latter, with its wooden handle, was used in Europe during the twelfth century, and was employed in delivering hand-grenades till the sixteenth. The primitive ball-and-cord, known to the ancient Egyptians, is still preserved in the Bolas of the South American Gaucho. A simultaneously invented missile would be the hurling or throwing-stick and its modification, the Boomerang, of which I have still to speak. The application of elasticity and resilience being now well known, would suggest the rudest form of the bow[58] and arrow. This invention, next in importance (though longo intervallo) to fire-making and fire-feeding, is the first crucial evidence of the distinction between the human weapon and the bestial arm. Nilsson and many others hold the invention to have been instinctive and common to all peoples; and we cannot wonder that it was made the invention of demi-gods—Nimrod, Scythes[59] the son of Jupiter, or Perses son of Perseus.[60] The missile arm at once showed man and beast separated by an extensive difference of degree, if not of kind, and it has played the most notable part, perhaps, of all weapons in the annals of humanity or inhumanity. It led to the Greek gastrapheta, the Roman arcubalista (crossbow[61]); to the palintonon or balista, and the arblast (an enlarged species of the arcus, intended for throwing darts of giant size); to the Belagerungs-balister, a fixed form; to the catapult, enthytonon, tormentum, scorpion or onager,[62] and to other formidable forms of classical artillery which preceded the ‘cheap and nasty’ invention of chemical explosives.

THE CLUB.

So much for the Hand-stone as the forefather of missiles and of ballistic science. Held in the fist it would give momentum, weight and velocity, force and bruising power, to the blow. Thus it was the forerunner of the club, straight and curved; the flail, the bâton ferré, the ‘morning star,’ the ‘holy-water sprinkler,’ and a host of similar weapons[63] that added another and a harder joint to man’s arm. Clubs—which in practice are aimed at the head, whereas the spear is mostly directed at the body[64]—would be easily made by pulling up a straight young tree, or by tearing down a branch from the parent trunk and stripping it of twigs and leaves. The club of Australia, a continent to which we look for original forms, has the branching rootlets trimmed to serve as spikes; moreover, the terminal bulge has been developed in order to stop or parry the assailant’s weapon. In fact the swell, ball, lozenge, or mushroom-head was the first germ of the Australasian shield. The next step would be to fashion the ragged staff with fire, with friction, and with flint knives, shells or other scrapers, into a cutting as well as a crushing instrument; and here we have one of the many origins of the Sword and of its diminutives, the dagger and the knife. Pointed at the end, it would become the lance and spear, the spud, spade, and palstave, the pilum, the dart, the javelin, and the assagai.

Not a few authorities contend that the earliest weapons, the most constant in all ages and continuous in all countries, were the spear and the axe. The first would be a development of the pointed hand-celt[65]; the latter of the leaf-formed or almond-shaped tool. But firstly, these would be mostly confined to countries with a well-developed Stone Age[66]; and secondly, the conversion of the hand-stone into an arme d’hast would assuredly be later than the club and the sharpened stick or stake.

Fig. 14.—Japanese War-Flail.

Fig. 15.—Turkish War-Flail.

Fig. 16.—Morning Star.

Herodotus, the father of ancient history in its modern form, a travelled student and a great genius, whose prose poem—for such it is—has proved incomparably more useful to us than any works of his successors, when describing a rock-sculpture of Sesostris-Ramses (ii. 106) makes him carry in his right hand a spear (Egyptian), and in his left a bow (Lybian or Ethiopian). Hence some writers on Hoplology have held that he considered these to be the oldest of weapons. But the ancients did not study prehistoric man beyond confounding human bones with those of extinct mammals. Augustus Cæsar was an early collector, according to Suetonius (in ‘August.’ c. xxii.). ‘Sua vero ... excoluit rebusque vetustate ac raritate notabilibus; qualia sunt Capræis immanum belluarum ferarumque membra prægrandia, quæ dicuntur gigantum ossa et arma heroum.’[67] The Emperor (whom the late Louis Napoleon so much resembled, even in the matter of wearing hidden armour[68]) preferred these curiosities to statues and pictures. The ancients also, like Marco Polo and too many of the moderns, spoke of the world generally after studying a very small part in particular. The Halicarnassian here evidently alludes to an epoch which had made notable advances upon the Quaternary Congener of the Simiads. We must return to a much earlier age. Lucretius, whose penetrating genius had a peculiar introvision, wrote like a modern scientist:—

Arma antiqua manus, ungues dentesque fuerunt,

Et lapides et item sylvarum fragmina rami;

Posterius ferri vis est, ærisque reperta,

Sed prius æris erat, quam ferri cognitus usus.[69]

Gentleman Horace is almost equally correct:—

Quum prorepserunt primis animalia terris,

Mutum et turpe pecus, glandem atque cubilia propter

Unguibus et pugnis, dein fustibus, atque ita porro

Pugnabant armis quæ post fabricaverat usus.[70]

How refreshing is the excellent anthropology of these pagans after the marvel-myths of man’s Creation propounded by the so-called ‘revealed’ religions.

THE ‘AGES.’

For the better distribution of the subject I shall here retain the obsolete and otherwise inadmissible, because misleading, terms—Age of Stone, Age of Bronze, Age of Iron.[71] From the earliest times all the metals were employed, without distinction, for weapons offensive and defensive: besides which, the three epochs intermingle in all countries, and overlap one another; they are, in fact, mostly simultaneous rather than successive. As a modern writer says, like the three principal colours of the rainbow, these three stages of civilisation shade off the one into the other; and yet their succession, as far as Western Europe[72] is concerned, appears to be equally well defined with that of the prismatic colours, though the proportion of the spectrum may vary in different countries. And, as a confusion of ideas would be created, especially when treating of the North European Sword, by neglecting this superficial method of classification, I shall retain it while proceeding to consider the development of the White Arm under their highly conventional limits.

I must, moreover, remark that the ternary division, besides having no absolute chronological signification, and refusing to furnish any but comparative dates, is insufficient. Concomitant with, and possibly anterior to, the so-called Stone Age, wood, bone, teeth, and horn were extensively used; and the use has continued deep into the metal ages. Throughout the lower valley of the River of the Amazons, where stone is totally wanting, primitive peoples must have armed themselves with another material. The hard and heavy trees, both of the Temperates and the Tropics, supplied a valuable material which could be treated simply by the use of fire, and without metal or even stone. Ramusio speaks of a sago-wood (Nibong or Caryota urens) made into short lances by the Sumatrans: ‘One end is sharpened and charred in the fire, and when thus prepared it will pierce any armour much better than iron would do.’[73] The weapon would be fashioned by the patient labour of days and weeks, by burying in hot ashes, by steaming and smoking, by charring and friction, by scraping with shells and the teeth of rodents, and by polishing with a variety of materials: for instance, with the rasping and shagreen-like skin of many fishes, notably the ray; with rough-coated grasses, and with the leaves of the various ‘sandpaper-trees’ which are hispid as a cat’s tongue. And the first step in advance would be dressing with silex, obsidian, and other cutting stones, and finishing with pumice or with the mushroom-shaped corallines. I shall reserve for the next chapter a description of the sabre de bois, unjustly associated in the popular saying with the pistolet de paille.

THE ‘BONE AGE.’

Bone, which includes teeth, presented to savage man a hard and durable material for improving his coarse wooden weapons. Teledamus or Telegonus, son of Circe and founder of Tusculum[74] and Præneste, according to tradition slew his father, Ulysses, with a lance-head of fish bone—aculeum marinæ belluæ. The teeth of the Squalus and other gigantum ossa or megatherian remains supplied points for the earliest projectiles, and added piercing power to the blow of the club. That a Bone Age may be traced throughout the world,[75] and that the phrase a ‘bone- and stone-using people’ is correct, was proved by the Weltausstellung of Vienna (1873), whose splendid collection found an able describer in Prof. A. Woldrich.[76] The caves of venerable Moustier (Département Dordogne), of Belgium, and of Lherm (Département Arriège) contributed many jawbones of the cave bear (Ursus spelæus); the ascending ramus of the inferior maxilla had been cut away to make a convenient grip, and the strong corner-teeth formed an implement or an instrument, a tool or a weapon. The caves of Peggau in Steiermark (Styria), of Palkau in Moravia, and the Pfahlbauten[77] or Pile-villages of Olmütz, produced a number of bone articles and remnants of the cave bear. These rude implements remind us of the weapon used to such good effect by the Biblical Samson, the Hebrew type of Hercules, the strong man, the slayer of monsters, and the Sun-god (Shamsún).[78]

Fig. 17.—Deer-Horn Arrow-Head.
(S. America.)

Fig. 18—Horn War Clubs with Metal Points.

Fig. 19.—Double Spear and Shield.

Fig. 20.—Spine of Diodon.

Fig. 21.—1. Walrus Tooth used as Spear Point; 2. Tomahawk of Walrus Tooth.

The wilder tribes of Cambodia convert the bony horn of the sword-fish into a spear head, with which they confidently attack the rhinoceros.[79] At Kotzebue Sound Captain Beechey found lances made of a wooden staff ending in a walrus-tooth; and this defence was also adapted to a tomahawk-point. The New Guinea tribes tip their arrows with the teeth of the saw-fish and the spines of the globe-fish (Diodon and Triodon). The horny style of the Malaccan king-crab (Limulus), a Crustacean sometimes reaching two feet in length, is also made into an arrow-pile.[80] The Australians of King George’s Sound arm their spears with the acute barbules of fishes; and the natives of S. Salvador, when discovered by Columbus, pointed their lances with fish-teeth. The Greenlander’s ‘nuguit’ (fig. 23) is mentioned by Crantz as armed with the narwhal’s horn, and the wooden handle is carved in relief with two human figures. By its side is another spear (fig. 24) with a beam in narwhal-shape, the foreshaft being composed of a similar ivory, inserted into the snout so as to represent the natural defence. Here we see the association in the maker’s mind between the animal from which the weapon is derived and the purpose of destruction for which it is chiefly used. It also illustrates the well-nigh universal practice amongst savages of making their weapons to imitate animate forms. The reason may be a superstition which still remains to be explained.

Fig. 22.—Sting of Malaccan Limulus Crab.

Fig. 23.—Tue Greenland Nuguit.

Fig. 24.—Narwhal Shaft and Metal Blade.

Fig. 25.—Jade Pattu-Pattus.

Foreshafts and heads of bone are still applied to the arrows of the South African Bushmans. They alternate with wood, chert, and metal throughout the North American continent, from Eskimo-land to California. A notable resemblance has been traced between the bone-club of the Nootka Sound ‘Indians,’ and the jade Pattu-Pattu or Meri of New Zealand. Hence it has been suspected that this short, flat weapon, oval or leaf-shaped, and made to hold in the hand, as if it were a stone celt, was originally an imitation of the os humeri. Like the celt, also, is the stone club found by Colonel A. Lane Fox in the bed of the Bawn river, north Ireland.[81]

The long bones of animals, with the walls of marrow-holes obliquely cut and exposing the hollow, were fastened upon sticks and poles, forming formidable darts and spears. The shape thus suggests the bamboo arrow-heads of the North Americans, whose cavity also served to carry poison.[82] They would, moreover, easily be fashioned by fracture, and by friction upon a hard and rough-grained substance, into Swords and daggers. The Fenni, or Finns, of Tacitus (‘Germ.’ c. 46), having no iron, used bone-pointed arrows. The Innuits, or Eskimos, of Greenland and other parts of the outer north, form with the ribs of whales their shuttles as well as their Swords. In ‘Flint Chips’ we find that the ancient Mexicans had bone-daggers. Wilde[83] gives a unique specimen of such a weapon found in the bed of the River Boyne ‘in hard blue clay, four feet under sand, along with some stone spear-heads.’ Formed out of the leg-bone of one of the large ruminants, it measures ten and a sixth inches long, the rough handle being only two and a half inches[84]; the blade is smooth, and wrought to a very fine point. This skeyne (the Irish ‘scjan’[85]) looks like a little model of a metal cut-and-thrust blade (fig. 27). Equally interesting is the knife-blade (fig. 29) found with many other specimens of manufactured bone in the Ballinderry ‘Crannog’[86] (county Westmeath): the total length is eight inches, and the handle is highly decorated. Other bone knives are mentioned in the ‘Catalogue’ (pp. 262–63). Bone prepared for making handles, and even ferules, for Swords and daggers is also referred to (p. 267): the material, being easily worked and tolerably durable, has, indeed, never fallen into disuse. In the shape of ivory,[87] walrus-tusk, and hippopotamus-tooth it is an article of luxury extensively used in the present day for the hafts of weapons and domestic implements. Lastly, bone served as a base to carry mere trenchant substances. The museum of Professor Sven Nilsson[88] shows (fig. 31) a smooth, sharp-pointed splinter, some six inches long, grooved in each side to about a quarter of an inch deep. In each of these grooves, fixed by means of cement, was a row of sharp-edged and slightly curved bits of flint. A similar implement (fig. 30) is represented in the illustrated catalogue of the Museum of Copenhagen. Of this contrivance I shall speak at length when treating of the wooden Sword.[89]

Fig. 26.—1. Bone Arrow-point for Poison; 2. Iron Arrow-head for Poison. (S. America.)

Fig. 27.—Wilde’s Dagger.

Fig. 28.—Hollow Bone for Poison.

Fig. 29.—Bone Knife.

Fig. 30.—Bone Arrow-Point armed with Flint Flakes.

Fig. 31.

‘AGES’ BEFORE THE ‘STONE AGE.’

While bone was extensively used by primitive Man, horn was the succedaneum in places where it was plentiful. The Swiss lake-dwellings have yielded stag’s horn and wooden hafts or helves, with bored holes and sockets; borers, awls or drills; mullers, rubbers, and various other instruments. The caverns of the Reindeer period in the south of France are not less rich. Stag-horn axes are common in Scandinavia, and one preserved by the Stockholm Museum bears the spirited outline of a deer. Beads, buttons, and other ornaments are found in England. This material, when taken from the old stag, is of greater density than osseous matter and of almost stony hardness, as the cancellated structure contains carbonate of lime; moreover it was easily worked by fire and steam.

THE ‘HORN-AGE.’

Diodorus (iii. cap. 15) describes the Ichthyophagi as using antelopes’ horns in their fishing, ‘for need teacheth all things.’ The earliest mention of a horn-arm is by Homer (‘Iliad,’ ii. 827, and iv. 105), who describes Pandarus, the Lycian, son of Lycaon, using a bow made of the six-spans-long[90] spoils of the ‘nimble mountain-goat.’ The weapon may have retained the original form. The early Greek types were either simple or composite. The Persians[91] preferred, and till lately used, wood and horn, stained, varnished, and adorned as much as possible. Duarte Barbosa[92] describes the Turkish bow at Hormuz Island as ‘made of buffalo-horn and stiff wood painted with gold and very pretty colours.’ The ‘Hornboge’ occurs in the ‘Nibelungenlied,’ and the Hungarians appeared in Europe with horn-bows and poisoned arrows.

The bows of the Sioux and Yutahs are of horn, backed with a strip of raw hide to increase the spring. The Blackfoot bow is made from the horn of the mountain-sheep (Catlin), and the Shoshone of the Rocky Mountains shape it by heating and wetting the horn, which is combined with wood (Schoolcraft). The Eskimos of Polar America, where nothing but drift-timber is procurable, are compelled to build their weapons with several bits of wood, horn, and bone, bent into form by smoking or steaming.

Admirable bows of buffalo-horn—small, but throwing far, and strong—are still made in the Indus-valley about Multan. For this use the horns are cut, scraped, thinned to increase elasticity; joined at the bases by wooden splints, pegs, or nails, and made to adhere by glue and sinews. Man would soon learn to sharpen his wooden shafts with horn-points, the spoils of his prey. Hence the ancient Egyptians applied horn to their light arrows of reed.[93] The Christy collection contains an arrow from South America (?) armed with a pile of deer-horn. The Melville Peninsula, being scant of materials, uses as arrow-piles the horns of a musk-ox (ovibos, more ovis than bos), and the thinned defences of the reindeer strengthened by sinews. Antelope-horns are still used as lance-points by the Nubians, the Shilluks, and the Denkas of the Upper Nile; by the Jibbus of Central Africa, and by the tribes of the southern continent.[94] The ‘Bantu’ or Kafir races, Zulus and others, make their kiri (kerry) either of wood or of rhinoceros-horn. It varies from a foot to a yard long, and is capped by a knob as large as a hen’s egg or a man’s fist: hence it is called ‘knob-stick’ or ‘throw-stick.’ The Ga-ne-u-ga-o-dus-ha (deer-horn war-club) of the Iroquois ended in a point of about four inches long; since the people had intercourse with Europeans they have learned to substitute metal. The form suggests that the martel-de-fer of Persia and India, used by Europe during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, was derived from a weapon of this kind: suitable points for arming it have been found in England and Ireland. The Dublin Museum (case 21, Petrie) contains an antler of the red deer converted into a thrusting weapon. The Jumbiyah (crooked dagger) of the Arabs, the Khanjar[95] of Persia and India, whence the Iberian Alfânge (El-Khanjar) and our silly ‘hanger,’ shows by form and point that it was originally the half of a buffalo-horn split longitudinally. The modern weapon, with metal blade and ivory handle, has one side of the latter flat, betraying its origin by retaining a peculiarity no longer required. The same is the case when the whole Jumbiyah is, as often happens, made of metal[96] (fig. 6, p. 10).

Fig. 32.—Harpoon Head.

The sufficiency of horn for the slender wants of uncivilised communities was admirably illustrated by the discovery of a Pfahlbau, or crannog, some three miles south of Laibach, the capital of Carniola, and a little north of the Brunnsdorf village. The site is a low mountain-girt basin, formerly a lake or broad of the Lai-cum-Sava river, and still flooded after heavy rains. Surface-finds were picked up in 1854–55, and regular explorations began in July 1875.[97] During that year two hundred articles were dug up. The material was chiefly stag-horn, tines, and beams, the latter often cut at the burr or antler-crown. The chief objects—many of them artistic as those of the French ‘Reindeer epoch’—were hatchets, hammers, needles, spindles, and punches of horn and split bone; fish-hooks, pincers, and skin-scrapers of hog’s tusks; with ornaments set in bone, and teeth bored for stringing. Many of these articles showed signs of the saw-kerf or notch which had probably been cut with sanded fibre acting like a file. There were harpoon-heads of peculiar shape, supposed to be unpierced whistles, the hole not having been bored through[98]: evidently they were made to ‘unship’ when striking the Welsen (Siluri) of the old lake, some of which must have been six feet long. The wooden foreshaft, joined by a string to its head, acted as float, and betrayed the position of the prey. This is the third stage of the harpoon: the first would be merely a heavy, pointed stick, and the second a spear with barbs. There were six horn Dolche (daggers), and one peculiar article, an edge of polished stone set in a horn-handle: the latter shows at once the abundance of game, and the value and rarity of the mineral, which probably belonged only to the rich. The eight stone implements were of palæolithic type; the few metal articles—a leaf-shaped sword-blade, a rude knife, lance-heads, arrow-piles, needles, and bodkins—were chiefly copper, five only being bronze; and the pottery corresponds with that of the neolithic period in the museums of Copenhagen and Stockholm. Thus the find, like several in Switzerland, showed a great preponderance of horns, bones, and teeth during a transitional age when the rest of Europe was using polished stone and metal.[99]

Prehistoric finds are still common in the Laibacher moorground (1882). Lauerza, a hamlet on the edge of the swamp, supplied (Nov. 7) a large stone-axe (Steinbeil), pierced and polished, of the quartzose conglomerate common in the adjacent highlands. This article was exceptional, most of the stone implements being palæolithic. At Aussergoritz appeared remnants of pottery and Roman tiles, a broken hairpin of bronze, a spear of Roman type, and a ‘palstab,’[100] also of bronze: the latter is the normal chisel-shaped hatchet with the flanges turned over for fitting to the handle; it measures 16·5 cent. long by 3·5 of diameter at the lower part. The sands of Grosscup also yielded sundry fine bronze armlets of Etruscan make found upon embedded skeletons. All the finds have been deposited in the Provincial Museum at Laibach.

The use of horn, like that of bone, has survived to the present day, and still appears in the handles of knives, daggers, and swords. It is of many varieties, and it fetches different prices according to the texture, the markings, and other mînutiæ known to the trade.[101]

CHAPTER III.
THE WEAPONS OF THE AGE OF WOOD: THE BOOMERANG AND THE SWORD OF WOOD; OF STONE, AND OF WOOD AND STONE COMBINED.

The Sword of Wood.

The ‘Age of Wood’ began early, lasted long, and ended late. As the practice of savages shows, the spear was originally a pointed stick hardened in the fire; and arrows, the diminutives of the spear, as daggers are of the Sword, were tipped with splinters of bamboo, whose Tabáshir or silicious bark acted like stone. The Peruvians, even after they could beat out plates of gold and silver, fought with pikes having no iron tips, but with the points hardened in the fire.[102] The same was the case with the Australians,[103] who, according to Mr. Howard Spensley,[104] also fashioned Swords of very hard wood: the Arabs of the Tihámat or Lowlands of Hazramaut (the Biblical Hazramaveth) are still compelled by poverty to use spears without metal. I pass over the general use of this world-wide material to the epoch when it afforded a true Sword.

The wooden Sword, as we see from its wide dispersion, must have arisen spontaneously among the peoples who had reached that stage of civilisation where it became necessary.[105] These weapons were found in the hands of the Indians of Virginia by the well-known Captain John Smith. Writing in 1606, Oldfield describes swords of heavy black wood in the Sandwich Islands, and Captain Owen Stansley in New Guinea. Mr. Consul Hutchinson notes the wooden swords used by the South American Itonanamas, a sub-tribe of the Maxos. Those preserved in Ireland and others brought from the Samoa Islands will be noticed in a future page. They may mostly be characterised as flat clubs sharpened at the edge, and used like our steel blades.

Fig. 33.—Lisán in Egypt and Abyssinia.

The shape of the wooden sword greatly varies, and so does its origin. Mr. Tylor fell into the mistake, so common in these classifying, generalising, and simplifying days, of deriving the sabre, because it is a cutting tool, from the axe, and the tuck or rapier from the spear because it thrusts. Wooden sword-blades alone have three prototypes, viz.:—

1. The club.
2. The throw-stick.
3. The paddle.

Fig. 34.—Lisán or Tongue.

I. The Bulak Museum (Cairo)[106] shows two good specimens of the ancient ‘Lisán’ (‘tongue’-weapon) club or curved stick. The first battles, says Pliny (vii. 57), were fought by the Africans against the Egyptians with clubs which they called phalangæ. The shorter club-sword (1 ft. 11 in.) has a handle ribbed with eighteen fine raised rings. The longer or falchion-shaped weapon (2 ft. 5 in.) is hatched at the grip with a cross pattern. Both are of hard wood blackened by age, and both have the distinct cutting edge. The ancient war-club was tipped with metal and whipped with thongs round the handle for firmer grasp, like the Roman fasces. The modern Lisán-club, made of tough mimosa-wood and about 2½ ft. long, is still used in close combat by the Negroid tribes of the Upper Nile. To the Bishárins and Amri the Lisán supplies, at dances and on festal occasions, the place of the sword. In Abyssinia there is a lighter variety (1 ft. 6 in.) banded alternately with red, blue, and green cloth, and protected by a network of brass wire. The Ababdeh (modern Æthiopians), content with this, the spear, and its pendant the shield, fear not to encounter tribes whose arms are the matchlock and a ‘formidable looking, but really inoffensive sword with a wondrous huge straight blade.’ These pastoral Nomads are of a peculiar and interesting type. The short stature and the well-curved and delicate limbs, whose action is quick, lithe, and graceful as the leopard’s, connect them with the Bedawin of Arabia; while the knotted and spiral locks standing on end, and resembling when tallowed a huge cauliflower, affiliate them to the African Somal. Their arms are more extensive than their dress, a mere waist cloth, the primitive attire of tropical man; and they live by hiring their camels to caravans.

The Dublin Museum[107] also shows the transitional forms between the club and the Sword. The weapon (a) numbered 143 is some twenty-five inches long: the second (b) is labelled ‘No. 144, wooden club-shaped implement, twenty-seven inches long.’

The club of the Savage developed itself in other directions to the shepherd’s staff, the bishop’s crozier, and the king’s sceptre; hence, too, the useless bâton of the field-marshal, and the maces of Mr. Speaker and My Lord Mayor. Here we may answer the question why the field-marshal should carry a stick instead of a Sword. The unwarlike little instrument is simply the symbol of high authority:[108] it is the rod, not of the Lictor, but of the Centurion, whose badge of office was a vine-sapling wherewith to enforce authority. Hence Lucan (vi. 146) says of gallant Captain Cassius Scæva who, after many wounds, beat off two swordsmen:—

Sanguine multo

Promotus Latiam longo gerit ordine vitem.

This use was continued by the drill-sergeant of Europe from England to Russia. The club again survives in the constable’s staff and the policeman’s truncheon.

THE BOOMERANG.

The form of throwing-stick, which we have taught ourselves to call by an Australian name ‘boomerang,’[109] thereby unduly localising an almost universal weapon from Eskimo-land to Australia, was evidently a precursor of the wooden Sword. It was well known to the ancient Egyptians. Wilkinson shows (vol. i. chap. 4) that it was of heavy wood, cut flat, and thus offering the least resistance, measuring 1 ft. 3 in. to 2 ft. long by 1½ in. broad. The shape, however, is not the usual segment of a circle, but a shallow S-curve inverted (Ƨ), more bent at the upper end, and straighter in the handle. One weapon (p. 236) seems to bear the familiar asp-head.[110] The British Museum contains a boomerang brought from Thebes by the Rev. Greville Chester, and a facsimile was exhibited by General Pitt-Rivers.[111] The end is much curved; the blade has four parallel grooves, and it bears the cartouche of Ramses the Great. In no instance have we found the round shape and the returning flight of its Australian congener. Three illustrations[112] show a large sportsman (the master) bringing down birds which rise from a papyrus-swamp, while a smaller figure (the slave) in the same canoe holds another weapon at arm’s length.

Fig. 35.—Transition from the Boomerang to the Hatchet (Australia).

Fig. 36.—Australian Picks.

1, 2. Pick of New Caledonia; 3. Malga or Leowel Pick.

Strabo[113] describes the (Belgian) Gauls as hunting with a piece of wood resembling a pilum, which is hand-thrown, and which flies to a distance farther than an arrow. He calls it the Γροσφὸς, which is also described as a pilum, dart, or javelin by Polybius;[114] but evidently this Grosphus means the throw-stick, usually termed by the Greeks ἀγκύλη (Ancyle). Silius Italicus arms in the ‘Punica’ one of the Libyan tribes which accompanied Hannibal with a bent or crossed cateia: the latter is identified with the throw-stick by Doctor (now Sir) Samuel Ferguson, poet and antiquary.[115] The encyclopædia of Bishop Isidore (a.d. 600–636) explicitly defines the cateia to be ‘a species of bat which, when thrown, flies not far by reason of its weight; but where it strikes it breaks through with extreme impetus, and if it be thrown with a skilful hand it returns to him who threw it:—rursum redit ad eum qui misit.’ Virgil also notices it:—

Et quos maliferæ despectant mœnia Abellæ

Teutonico ritu soliti torquere cateias. (Æn. vii. 740).

Jähn (p. 410)[116] remembers the Miölner, or hammer of Thor, which flew back to the hand.

Fig. 37.—Indian Boomerangs.

1. War Hatchet, Jibba Negros; 2. Steel Chakra, or Sikh Quoit; 3. Steel Collery; 4, 5. Collery of Madras, with knobbed handle.

Fig. 38.—Boomerang and Kite.

It has been noted that this peculiarity of reversion or back-flight is not generic, even in the true boomerang, but appertains only to specific forms. Doubtless it was produced by accident, and, when found useful for bringing down birds over rivers or marshes, it was retained by choosing branches with a suitable bend. The shapes greatly differ in weight and thickness, in curvature and section. Some are of the same breadth throughout; others bulge in the centre; while others are flat on one side and convex on the other. In most specimens the fore part of the lath is slightly ‘dished’: hence the bias causes it to rise in the air on the principle of a screw-propeller. The thin edge of the weapon is always opposed to the wind, meeting the least resistance. The axis of rotation, when parallel to itself, makes the missile ascend as long as the forward movement lasts, by the action of the atmosphere on the lower side. When the impulse ceases it falls by the line of least resistance, that is, in the direction of the edge which lies obliquely towards the thrower. In fact, it acts like a kite with a suddenly broken string, dropping for a short distance. But as long as the boomerang gyrates, which it does after the forward movement ends, it continues to revolve on the same inclined plane by which it ascended until it returns to whence it came. This action would also depend upon weight; the heavy weapons could not rise high in the air, and must drop by mere gravity before coming back to the thrower.

Fig. 39.—African Boomerangs.

1, 2. Hunga-munga; 3. African Weapon; 4. Kordofan Weapon; 5. The same developed; 6. Faulchion of Mundo Tribe; 7. The same developed; 8. Jibba Negros; 9. Knob-stick; 10. Ancient Egyptians (Rosellini); 11. Old Egyptian; 12–15. Tomahawks of Nyam-Nyams; 16. Fan (Mpangwe) Tomahawk; 17. Dor Battle-axe; 18. Dinka and Shilluk Weapon.

From Egypt the weapon spread into the heart of Africa. The Abyssinian ‘Trombash’ is of hard wood, acute-edged, and about two feet long; the end turns sharply at an angle of 30°, but the weapon does not whirl back.[117] The boomerang of the Nyam-Nyams is called kulbeda. Direct derivation is also shown by the curved iron projectile of the Mundo tribe on the Upper Nile, a weapon of the same form being represented on the old Egyptian monuments. The ‘hunga-munga’ of the negros south of Lake Chad, and the adjoining peoples, shows a further development of spikes or teeth disposed at different angles, enabling the missile to cut on both sides. The varieties of this form, with a profusion of quaint ornaments, including lateral blades which answer the purpose of wings, and which deal a severer wound, are infinite. Denham and Clapperton give an illustration of a Central African weapon forming the head and neck of a stork. So the Mpangwe negros[118] of the Gaboon River, West Africa, shape their missiles in the form of a bird’s head, the triangular aperture (fig. 40, No. 5) representing the eye.

Fig. 40.—Transition from the Malga, Leowel or Pick to the Boomerang (Australia).

The throwing-stick has been found in Assyrian monuments: Nemrúd strangling the lion holds a boomerang in his right hand. Thence the weapon travelled East; and the Sanskrit Ástara, or Scatterer, was extensively used by the pre-Aryan tribes of India. The Kolis, oldest known inhabitants of Gujarát, call it ‘Katuriyeh,’ a term probably derived from ‘Cateia’; the Dravidians of the Madras Presidency know it as ‘Collery,’ and the Tamulian Kallar and Marawar (of Madura), who use it in deer-hunting, term it ‘Valai Tadi’ (bent stick). The Pudukota Rajah always kept a stock in arsenal. The length greatly varies, the difference amounting to a cubit or more; and three feet by a hand-breadth may be the average. The middle is bent to the extent of a cubit; the flat surface with a sharp edge is one hand broad. ‘Its three actions are whirling, pulling, and breaking, and it is a good weapon for charioteers and foot soldiers.’ Prof Oppert, writing ‘On the Weapons, &c. of the ancient Hindus’ (1880), tells us that the Museum of the Madras Government has two ivory throw-sticks from Tanjore and a common wooden one from Pudukota; his own collection contains four of black wood and one of iron. All these instruments return, as do the true boomerangs, to the thrower. The specimens in the old India-House Museum conform with the natural curvature of the wood, like the Australian; but, being thicker and heavier, they fall without back-flight. Not a few of the boomerangs cut with the inner edge, the shapes of the blade and of the grip making them unhandy in the extreme.

Fig. 41.—The Stick and the Shield.

1. Various forms of Australian Tamarang or Parrying Shields; 2. Shield of Mundo Negros; 3. Negro parrying Shield; 4. Old Egyptian Parrying Shield; 5. Dowak straight flat Throw-stick (Australia); 6. Boomerang that does not return; 7. Boomerang that does return.

Fig. 42.—Throw-sticks.

1. Australian Tombat; 2. Malga War-pick; 3–6. Australian Waddy Clubs; 7. Hatchet Boomerang.

Fig. 43.—Old Egyptian Boomerang.