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The Dublin Museum also shows the transitional forms between the club and the Sword. The weapon numbered 143 is some twenty-five inches long: the second 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 b?ton 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: 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 says of gallant Captain Cassius Scaeva 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.

Et quos maliferae despectant moenia Abellae Teutonico ritu soliti torquere cateias. .

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.

The throwing-stick has been found in Assyrian monuments: Nemr?d strangling the lion holds a boomerang in his right hand. Thence the weapon travelled East; and the Sanskrit ?stara, or Scatterer, was extensively used by the pre-Aryan tribes of India. The Kolis, oldest known inhabitants of Gujar?t, 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 , who use it in deer-hunting, term it 'Valai Tadi' . 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' , 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.

From the throw-stick would naturally arise the Chakr?, the steel wheel or war-quoit, which the Ak?lis--a stricter order of Sikhs--carried in their long hair, and launched after twirling round the forefinger. The boomerang-shape is also perpetuated in the dreaded Kukkri or Gurkha Sword-knife, now used, however, only for hand-to-hand fighting. I have mentioned the Cuchillo or Spanish clasp-knife- and the Italian sickle-throwing. The Australian weapon was unknown, like the shield, to Tasmania, whose only missile was the Waddy or throw-stick.

As the Australian club, swelling at the end, developed itself in one direction, to the Malga and hatchet, so on the other line it became, by being narrowed, flattened, and curved, the boomerang and the boomerang-sword. Finally, the immense variety of curves--some of them bending at a right angle--were straightened and made somewhat long-oval and leaf-shaped for momentum and impetus.

The direct descent of the curved wooden Sword of Egypt from the boomerang is shown in many specimens. The blade becomes narrow, flat, and more curved; the handle proves that it is no longer a mere missile, and the grip is scored with scratches to secure a firmer grasp. The best specimen known to me is in the Bulak Museum. It is a light weapon of sycomore wood, measuring in length 1 m?tre 30 cent. , in breadth nearly 15 cent. , and in thickness 0?2 cent. , while the depth of the perpendicular connecting the arc with the chord is 10 cent. But what makes it remarkable is that the Sword bears at one side the so-called 'Cartouche' of King Ta-a-a , and at the other end of the same side in a parallelogram the name and titles of Prince 'Touaou, the servant of his master in his expeditions.' This fine specimen was found with the mummy and other articles at the Drah Abu'l-Neggah, the Theban cemetery.

The paddle or original oar, mostly used by savages with the face to the bow, is of two kinds. The long, pointed spear-like implement serves, as a rule, for deeper, and the broad-headed for shallower, waters. Both show clearly the transitional state beginning with the club and ending with the Sword.

Mr. J. E. Calder, describing the Catamaran of the swamp tea-tree on the southern and western coasts of Tasmania, says : 'The mode of its propulsion would shock the professional or amateur waterman. Common sticks, with points instead of blades, are all that were used to urge it with its living freight through the water, and yet I am assured that its progress is not so very slow.' Spears were employed in parts of Australia to paddle the light bark canoes, and the Nicobar Islanders have an implement combining spear and paddle: it is of iron-wood, and of pointed-lozenge shape, about five feet in length.

The African paddles, usually employed upon lagoons and inland waters, are broad-headed, either rounded off or furnished with one or more short points at the end. Every tribe has its own peculiarities, and a practised eye easily knows the people by their paddles. A broad blade, almost rounded and very slightly pointed, is also made in the Austral Isles, in the Kingsmill Islands, and in the Marquesas.

The passage of the paddle into the Sword is well shown amongst the wilder 'Indians' of the Brazil. The Tupis still employ the Tacap?, Tangap?, or Iverapema, which is written 'Iwarapema' by Hans Stade, of Hesse, in the charmingly na?ve account of his travels and captivity. It was a single piece of the hard, heavy, and gummy wood which characterises these hot-damp regions, and of different shapes with and without handles. The most characteristic implement is a long and rounded shaft with a tabular, oval, and slightly-pointed blade: it was slung by a lanyard round the neck and hung on either side. With a weapon of this kind the cannibal natives slaughtered Pero Fernandes Sardinha, first Bishop of Bahia, and all his suite; the 'martyrs' had been wrecked on the shoals of Dom Rodrigo off the mouth of the Coruripe River. The scene is illustrated in the 'History' of the late M. de Varnhagen .

A similar Brazilian instrument was the Macan?, still used on the Rio das Amazonas, and there called Tamarana. It retains the form of the original paddle, while for offensive purposes the pointed oval head is sharpened all round. In parts of the Brazil the Macan? was a rounded club; and the sharpened paddle used as a Sword was called Pagaye. The Peruvian Macan? and the Callua--the latter compared with a short Turkish blade--were made of chonta-wood which was hard enough to turn copper tools. Mr. W. Bollaert tells us that the 'Macan? was said by some to be shaped like a long Sword, by others like a club.' It was both. The Tapuyas set these broad-headed weapons with teeth and pointed bones.

The fine Ethnological Museum of Herr Cesar Godeffroy of Hamburg and Samoa, illustrating the ethnology of the Pacific Islands, contains many specimens of the knob-stick bevelled on one side of the head to an edge and gradually passing into the Sword. On the right-hand entrance-wall are, or were, two fine sabres of Eucalyptus-wood, labelled 'Schwert von Bowen .' The Sandwich Islanders, we see, still wield the Sword-club with sharp-cutting edges, like their neighbours of New Ireland. The savage Solomon Archipelago has supplied a two-handed sabre of light and bright-yellow wood; its longitudinal mid-rib shows direct derivation from the paddle-club. There is also a lozenge-shaped hand-club, which may readily have given a model to metal-workers. It is of hard, dark, and polished wood, and the handle is whipped round with coir : the length is seventy cent. by four of maximum breadth. The Swords are unfortunately not figured in the catalogue; but there is a fine wooden knife forty-nine cent. long by six cent. broad, with open handle and highly-worked grip . It comes from Vanna Lava, Banks Group, New Hebrides, Polynesia .

The wooden Sword extended deep into the Age of Metal. Articles of the kind have been brought from New Zealand, which are evident copies of modern European weapons. Wilde gives the wooden Sword, found five feet deep in Ballykilmunary near High Park, county Wicklow, with some bog-butter, but he finds no indications of its age. The length is twenty inches . Upon the side of the blade, and of a piece with it, stands a projection whose purpose is unknown: it is evidently inconvenient for a toy; but if the relic be a model for a sand-mould, the excrescence would have left an aperture by which to pour in the metal. This view is supported by the shape of the handle, which resembles the grips of the single-piece bronze Swords found in different parts of Europe. The Dublin Museum also contains a blade apparently intended for thrusting, and labelled 'Wooden Sword-shaped Object.' The material is oak, blackened by burial in bog-earth: it has a mid-rib, a bevelled point, and no appearance of being a model .

Whilst wood was extensively used for Swords, the Age of Stone supplied few. The broad and leaf-shaped silex-flakes, dignified by the name of Swords, are only daggers and long knives. The fracture of flint is uncertain, even when freshly quarried. The workmen would easily chip and flake it to form scrapers, axes, spear-heads, and arrow-piles; but after a certain length, from eight to nine inches, the splinters would be heavy, brittle, and unwieldy. Obsidian, like silex, would make daggers rather than swords. Such are the stone dirk and cutlass in the Kensington Museum. Several European museums preserve these flat, leaf-shaped knives of the dark cherty flint found in Egypt. The British Museum contains a polished stone knife broken at the handle, which bears upon it in hieroglyphics the name of 'Ptahmes , an officer.' There is also an Egyptian dagger, of flint from the Hay Collection, still mounted in its original wooden handle apparently by a central tang, and with remains of its skin sheath. The Jews, who borrowed circumcision from the Egyptians, used stone knives . Atys, says Ovid, mutilated himself with a sharp stone,--

Ille etiam saxo corpus laniavit acuto;

and the Romans sacrificed pigs with flints. Several undated poniards in our collections are remarkable: for instance, the English daggers of black and white flint, rare in Scotland and unknown in Ireland; the Iberian or Spanish blade in the Christy Collection, five and a half inches long, and found at Gibraltar; the Tizcuco blade of chalcedony, eight inches long ; the Danish dagger in the Copenhagen Museum, thirteen and a half inches long ; and the flint hatchet-sabre of the same collection, fifteen and a half inches in length. It is a mystery how the minute and delicate ornamentation, the even fluting like ripple marks, on these Danish flint-daggers was produced.

A better substance than flint was found in the compact sandstone and in granitic serpentine, so called because that rock resembles a snake's skin. It is easily worked, while it is harder than the common serpentine. A dagger or knife found beside a stone cist in Perthshire is described as a natural formation of mica-schiste.

The Stone Age produced nothing more remarkable than the Pattu-Pattu or Meri of New Zealand, which an arrested development prevented becoming a Sword. Its shape, that of an animal's blade-bone, suggests its primitive material; and New Guinea has an almost similar form, with corresponding ornamentation in wood. What assimilates it to the Sword is that it is sharp-edged at the top as well as at the side. It is used for 'prodding' as well as for striking, and the place usually chosen for the blow is the head, above the ear, where the skull is weakest. Some specimens are of the finest green jade or nephrite, a refractory stone which must have been most troublesome to fashion.

Wood, however hard and heavy, made a sorry cutting weapon, and stone a sorrier Sword; but the union of the two improved both. Hence we may divide wooden Swords into the plain and the toothed blades, the latter--

Armed with those little hook-teeth in the edge, To open in the flesh and shut again.

An obvious advance would be to furnish the cutting part with the incisors of animals and stone-splinters. In Europe these would be agate, chalcedony, and rock-crystal; quartz and quartzite; flint, chert, Lydian stone, horn-stone, basalt, lava, and greenstone ; haematite, chlorite, gabbro , true jade , jadite, and fibrolite, found in Auvergne. Pinna and other shells have been extensively used--for instance, by the Andamanese--as arrow-heads and adze-blades.

Tenerife, and the so-called New World, preferred the easily-cleft green-black obsidian, of which the Ynkas also made their knives. The Polynesian Islands show two distinct systems of attachment. In the first the fragments, inserted into the grooved side, are either tied or made fast by gum or cement. In the second they are set in a row between two small slats or strips of wood, which, lastly, are lashed to the weapon with fibres. The points are ingeniously arranged in the opposite direction, so as to give severe cuts both in drawing and withdrawing. The Eskimos secure the teeth by pegs of wood and bone. The Pacho of the South Sea Islanders is a club studded on the inner side with shark's teeth made fast in the same manner. The Brazilian Tapuyas armed a broad-headed club with teeth and bones sharpened at the point. In 'Flint Chips' we find that a North American tribe used for thrusting a wooden Sword, three feet long, tipped with mussel-shell. Throughout Australia the natives provide their spears with sharp pieces of obsidian or crystal: of late years they have applied common glass, a new use for waste and broken bottles . The fragments are arranged in a row along one side near the point, and are firmly cemented. There is no evidence of this flint-setting in Ireland: but the frequent recurrence of silex implements adapted for such purpose has suggested, as in the Iroquois graves, that the wood which held them together may have perished. We read in 'Flint Chips' that the Selden Manuscript shows a flake of obsidian mounted in a cleft wooden handle, the latter serving as a central support, with a mid-rib running nearly the whole length. The sole use of the weapon was for thrusting.

The people of Copan opposed Hernandez de Chaves with slings, bows, and 'wooden Swords having stone edges.' In the account of the expedition sent out by Raleigh to relieve the colony of Virginia, we read of 'flat, edged truncheons of wood,' about a yard long. In these were inserted points of stag-horn, much in the same manner as is now practised, except that European lance-heads have taken their place. Knives, Swords, and glaives, edged with sharks' teeth, are found in the Marquesas; in Tahiti, Depeyster's Island, Byron's Isles, the Kingsmill Group, Redact Island, the Sandwich Islands, and New Guinea. Captain Graah notices a staff edged with shark's teeth on the cast coast of Greenland, and the same is mentioned amongst the Eskimos by the late Dr. King.

In the tumuli of Western North America, Mr. Lewis Morgan, the 'historian of the Iroquois,' mentions that, when opening the 'burial mounds' of the Far West, rows of flint-flakes occurred lying side by side in regular order; they had probably been fastened into sticks or swords like the Mexican. Hernandez describes the 'Mahquahuitl' or Aztec war-club as armed on both sides with razor-like teeth of 'Itzli' , stuck into holes along the edge, and fastened with a kind of gum. Mr. P. T. Stevens says that this Mexican broadsword had six or more teeth on either side of the blade. Herrera, the historian, mentions, in his 'Decads,' 'Swords made of wood having a gutter in the fore part, in which the sharp-edged flints were strongly fixed with a sort of bitumen and thread.' In 1530, according to contemporary Spanish historians, Copan was defended by 30,000 warmen, armed with these and other weapons, especially with fire-hardened spears. The same have been represented in the sculptures of Yucatan, which imitated the Aztecs. Lord Kingsborough's ruinous work on Mexican antiquities, mostly borrowed from Dupaix, shows a similar contrivance . A Sword having six pieces of obsidian in each side of the blade, is to be seen in a museum in Mexico. A Mexican Sword of the fifteenth century is of iron-wood, twenty-five inches long, and armed with ten flakes of black obsidian; and the same is the make of another Mexican Sword nearly four feet long.

The next step would be to use metal for bone and stone. So the Eskimos of Davis Strait and some of the Greenlanders show an advance in art by jagging the edge with a row of chips of meteoric iron. This would lead to providing the whole wooden blade with an edge of metal, when the latter was still too rare and too expensive for the whole weapon. This economy might easily have overlapped not only the Bronze, but the Iron Epoch.

The tooth-shaped edge was perpetuated in the Middle Ages, as we see by serrated and pierced blades of Italian daggers. That it is not yet extinct the absurd saw-bayonet of later years proves.

We now reach the time when Man, no longer contented with the baser materials--bone and teeth, horn and wood--learned the use of metals, possibly from an accidental fire, when

... a scrap of stone cast on the flame that lit his den Gave out the shining ore, and made the Lord of beasts a Lord of men.

A chief named Shongo, of Nemuro, in Japan, assured Mr. John Milne that, 'in old times, when there were no cutting tools of metal, the people made them of Aji, a kind of black stone, or of a hard material called ironstone. Even now implements of this material are employed by men who dwell far in the interior.' Here, then, is another instance of the stone and the metal 'Ages' overlapping, even where the latter has produced the perfection of steel-work.

THE PROTO-CHALCITIC OR COPPER AGE OF WEAPONS.

I will begin by noticing that the present age has settled a question which caused much debate, and which puzzled Grote and a host of others half a century ago, before phosphor-bronze was invented. This was the art of hardening copper and its alloys. All knew that these metals had been used, in cutting the most refractory substances, granite, syenite, porphyry, basalt, and perhaps diorite, by the ancient Egyptians, Assyrians, Trojans, and Peruvians. But none knew the process, and some cut the knot by questioning its reality. When you cannot explain, deny--is a rule with many scientists. The difficulty was removed by the Uchatius-gun, long reported to be of 'steel-bronze,' but simply of common bronze hardened by compression. At the Anthropological Congress of Laibach , Gundaker Graf Wurmbrandt, of Pettau, exhibited sundry castings, two spear-heads and a leaf-shaped blade of bright bronze adorned with spirals to imitate the old weapons. They were so indurated by compression that they cut the common metal.

It may be doubted whether old Egypt and Peru knew our actual process of hydraulic pressure, whose simplest form is the waterfall. But they applied the force in its most efficient form. The hardest stones were grooved to make obelisks; the cuts were filled with wedges of kiln-dried wood, generally sycomore; and the latter, when saturated with water, split the stone by their expansion. And we can hardly deny that a people who could transport masses weighing 887 tons over a broken country, from El-Suwan to Thebes, a distance of 130 miles, would also be capable of effecting mechanical compression to a high degree.

Ransack'd the centre, and with impious hands Rifled the bowels of their mother earth For treasures better hid.

The greater antiquity of copper in Southern Europe was distinctly affirmed, as has been seen, by the Ancients. The use of sheeting, or plating, on wood or stone was known as long ago as the days of Hesiod :

Copper for armour and arms had they, eke Copper their houses, Copper they wrought their works when naught was known of black iron.

Copper sheets were also used for flooring, as we learn from the ??????? ????? of Sophocles ; and the treasury-room of Delphi, as opposed to the ?????? ????? . So in the Palace of Alcinous the walls and threshold were copper, the pillars and lintels were silver, and the doors and dogs of gold.

Lucretius is explicit upon the priority of copper--

He justly determines its relation to gold--

And he ends with the normal sneer at his own age--

Virgil, a learned archaeologist, is equally explicit concerning the heroes of the AEneid and the old Italian tribes--

AEratae micant peltae, micat aereus ensis.--AEn. vii. 743.

And similarly Ennius--

AEratae sonant galeae: sed ne pote quisquam Undique nitendo corpus discerpere ferro.

Even during her most luxurious days Rome, like Hetruria, retained in memoriam the use of copper for the sclepista or sacrificial knife. When founding a city they ploughed the pomoerium with a share of aes. The Pontifex Maximus and priests of Jupiter used hair-shears of the same material, even as the Sabine priests cut their locks with knives of aes. The Ancile or sacred shield was also of aes.

Pure copper, however, would generally be used only in lands where tin for bronze, and zinc for brass, were unprocurable: isolated specimens may point only to a temporary dearth. Thus, the Copper Age must have had distinct areas. M. de Pulsky and M. Cartenhac held to a distinct Copper Age between the Neolithic and the Bronze. Dr. John Evans considers the fabrication due to want of tin or to preference of copper for especial purposes. But the types of copper tools, &c., are not transitional.

The native ore was used in many districts of North America. Celts of various shapes from Mhow, Central India, were analysed by Dr. Percy, who found no tin in them. Tel Sifr in Southern Babylonia and the island of Thermia in the Greek Archipelago supplied similar articles. They are also discovered exceptionally in Denmark, Sweden, Austria, and Hungary, France, Italy, and Switzerland. I have noticed the use of the unmixed metal in the Crannogs of Styria. It seems to have prevailed in Istria: at Reppen-Tabor near Trieste, the supposed field of battle with the Romans that decided the fate of the Peninsula , was found a fine lance-head of pure copper eight and a half inches long: it is now in the Museo Civico. The same was the case with Dalmatia; at Spalato and elsewhere I saw axe-heads of unmixed metal. And we have lately obtained evidence that old Lusitania, like Ireland, was in similar conditions.

According to S. P. Festus , 'aerosam appellaverunt antiqui insulam Cuprum, quod in e? plurimum aeris nascitur.' We now derive the Sacred Island from 'Guib' , 'er' , and 'is' ; 'Guiberis,' alluding to its staple growth. General Palma prefers the Semitic 'kopher' , the henna-shrub, even as Rhodes took its name from the rose or malvacea; and he finds in Stephanus Byzantinus that the plant was then abundant. The diggings are alluded to by all the great geographers of antiquity, Aristotle , Dioscorides , Strabo , and Pliny . In Ezekiel the trade in copper vessels is attributed to Javan , Tubal, and Meshech; the latter are the Moschi of Herodotus , a Caucasian people who may have originated the 'Moscows' or Russians. Agapenor and his Arcadians were credited with having introduced copper-mining into Neo-Paphos; yet there is no doubt that the Phoenicians had worked metal there before the Greek colonisation. Menelaus visits Cyprus for copper; and Athene-Mentor fetches it, as well as 'shining iron' , from Tem?se . These diggings, together with those of Hamath , Soli, Curium, and Crommyon, are mentioned by Palma, who also alludes to an 'unlimited wealth of copper.' Yet, despite this and the general assertion that copper was the most important production of Cyprus, we have found only the poorest mines at Soli in the Mesaoria-plain, the counterslope of the Pedia. The island, it is true, has been wasted and spoiled by three centuries of the 'unspeakable Turk.' But the researches of late travellers and collectors--and these have been exhaustive since the British occupation--have hitherto failed to find extensive traces of mining. The rarity, together with the poverty of the matrix, would suggest the following explanation.

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