the wild Bhils, 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' of medieval writers.

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 swordblades. 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. 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.3

1 Boutell (Arms and Armour, fig. 61, p. 269) engraves a parrying weapon with a blade at right angles to the handle. He calls it a Moorish Adargue' (fifteenth century). The latter word (with the r) is simply the Arabic word el-darakah, a shield, the origin of our targe' and 'target.' The adaga (not adarga, cantos i. 87, viii. 29) with which Camoens in The Lusiads (ii. 95, &c.) arms the East Africans is a weapon of the Mádu kind. I have translated it 'dagtarge,' because in that part of the world it combines

6

poniard and buckler. The savage and treacherous natives of the Solomon Islands (San Christoval, &c.) still use a nondescript weapon, half Sword and half shield, some six feet long.

2 Captain Speke's Discovery of the Source of the Nile, p. 652 (Edinburgh: Blackwoods, 1863).

3 In the form called Manchette, or cutting at hand, wrist, and forearm with the inner edge. It is copiously described in iv. 45-54 of my New System of Sword Exercise, &c. (London: Clowes, 1876).

ments.

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 instruHence Colonel A. Lane Fox observes: '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 1 Primitive Warfare, p. 24.

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.

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 primeval 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.'1 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.

The

Let us take as an instance two of the most widespread of weapons. blow-pipe's progressive form has been independently developed upon a similar plan, with distinctly marked steps, in places the most remote.2 Another instance is the chevaux-de-frise, the spikes of metal familiar to the classics. 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.

Sir Charles Lyell, Geological Evidences of Antiquity of Man, p. 13 (London: Murray, 1863). Dr. W. Lauder Lindsay (Proc. Soc. Ant. Scot. vol. v. p. 327) says of the Maori tokis or stone-hatchets, they were used chiefly for cutting down timber and for scooping canoes out of the trunks of forest trees; for driving posts for huts; for grubbing up roots, and killing animals for food; for preparing firewood; for scraping the flesh from the bones when eating, and for various other purposes in the domestic arts. But they were also employed in times of war as weapons of offence and defence, as a supplementary kind of tomahawk.

2 The French sarbacane, the Italian and Spanish cerbotana, the Portuguese gravatana, and the German Blasrohr (blow-tube) is, according to Demmin (p. 468), arbotana, or rather carpicanna, derived from 'Carpi,' the place of manufacture, and the Assyrian (Kane), Greek and Latin kávva (canna), whence 'cannon.' This tube, spread over three distinct racial areas in Southern Asia, Africa, and America, is used either for propelling clay balls or arrowlets, poisoned

and unpoisoned. It is the sumpitan of Borneo, where Pigafetta (1520) mentions reeds of this kind in Cayayan and Palavan Islands. The hollow bamboo is still used by the Laos of Siam, and is preserved among the Malagasy as a boyish way of killing birds. Père Bourieu notes it among the Malaccan negrito aborigines, whom the Moslem Malays call 'OranBanua' (men of the woods); the weapon they term tomeang. It is known in Ceylon, in Silhet, and on both sides of the Bay of Bengal. Condamine describes it among the Yameos (South American Indians); Waterlow and Klemm, in New Guinea, and Markham among the Uapes and other tribes on the Amazonas head-waters. In the New World it is of two varieties: the long heavy zarabatana, and the thinner, slighter pucuna. Finally, it has degraded to the 'pea-shooter' of modern Europe. The principal feature of the weapon is the poisoned dart; it is therefore unknown amongst tribes who, like the Andamanese, have not studied toxics (Journ. Anthrop. Inst. p. 270, February 1882).

See the hamus ferrcus pointed at both ends in

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.' 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.2

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. 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.' 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.3

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.

Demmin (p. 124); and the German Fussängel (p. 465). The larger caltrop was called tribulus, stylus or stilus (Veget. De Re Mil. iii. 24). The knights of mediaval Europe planted their spurs rowels upwards to serve the same purpose.

1 'Make your hand perfect by a third attempt,' said Timocrates in Athenæus, i. cap. 4.

2 Hitherto,' remarks Colonel A. Lane Fox, 'Providence operates directly on the work to be performed by means of the living animated tool; henceforth it operates indirectly on the progress and development of creation, first through the agency of the instinctively tool-using savage, and, by degrees, of the intelligent and reasoning man.'

3 J. F. Rowbotham : Certain reasons for believing that the Art of Music, in prehistoric times, passed through three distinct stages of development, each characterised by the invention of a new form of instrument; and that these stages succeeded one

another in the same order in various parts of the world' (Fourn. Anthrop. Inst. May 1881). The author states that the Veddahs (properly Vædiminissu, or 'sportsmen') of Ceylon, the Mincopis (Andamans), and the people of Tierra del Fuego 'have no musical instruments at all.'

Opuscula fidicularum, &c. (London: Mitchell and Hughes).

5 Specus erant pro domibus. Caverns appear to be divisible into three classes: dwelling-places-including refuges, where, as Prometheus says (i. 452), 'Men lived like little ants beneath the ground in the gloomy recesses of grots'-storehouses, and sepulchres. All were in Lyell's third phase. The first was when the rock began to form the channel by dissolution; the second, when a regular river flowed; and the third, when earth and air, instead of water, filled the bed.

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 fisti cuff, 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 1; still, the size and shape of the maxilla rendered it an arm inferior to the hyana'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), 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,3 were expert stone-throwers. They fought their duels 'in the public

West Africa, i. 116) borrows from the Spanish of Abreu-Galindo. Mr. F. W. Newman (Libyan Vocabulary: Trübner, 1882) has illustrated the four Libyan languages-the Algerian Kabáil (ancient Numidian), the Moroccan Shilhá (Mauritanian), the Ghadamsi (of which we know little), and the Tuárik (guides), or Tarkiya (Gætulian). 'Guanche' is a corruption of guan (Berber wan), 'one person,' and Chinet, or Tenerife Island; guan-chinet, meaning ' a man of Tenerife.' I have returned to this subject in my last book on the Gold Coast (i. chap. 5).