[368] Regulus (the ‘little king’) is the residue of pure metal purged of its dross; the old alchemists so entitled it because they ever expected to find the great king—Gold.

[369] At the Anthropological Congress of Austrian Salzburg (Aug. 1881) the tools attributed to the ‘Keltic’ miners were almost the same as those which I had seen near the Wrekin.

[370] Ingénieur des Mines: ‘Gisements métallifères du District de Carthagène (Espagne),’ Liège, 1875; a contribution to the Proc. Geolog. Soc. Belgium; and the result of extensive geological and mineralogical observation. The coloured map shows the strata-sequence (actual and in ideal order) to be tertiary limestone, iron-ore (carbonated, manganiferous, or plumbiferous); schistes; blende; schistes; silicated iron and schistes.

[371] Lectures on the Science of Language, pp. 254–55, vol. ii., edit. 1873.

[372] Chips from a German Workshop (set up in England), p. 47, vol. ii., edit. 1868.

[373] Mr. Day (General Table of Terms, given at end of this chapter) quotes as ‘oldest Sanskrit’ two names of iron, आर (ár or ára), meaning the planet Mars (Ares) or Saturn; iron (oxide of iron, ironstone?), brass (copper?); and अयस्, áyas (whence ayaskant, a loadstone, and ayaskár, a smith), a word already noticed in connection with æs. But Mr. Day adds to his ‘oldest Sanskrit’ ‘probably b.c. 1500’; and here again we recognise the master-touch of the subtle race—

[374] Report of Gen. A. Cunningham (Archæolog. Survey, 1861–62). It speaks highly for Anglo-Indian vis inertiæ and incuriousness when we are told that the ‘whole length of the pillar is unknown,’ and when every observer’s account of it differs in essentials.

[375] The savant who first translated the inscription Indian Antiquities, vol. i. p. 319. The dates vary between the tenth century b.c. and a.d. 1052 (!).

[376] The Persian haft-júsh (seven boilings), referred to by Ibn Batutah in Colonel Yule’s letter, p. 145 (Day, p. 153).

[377] Quoted by Mr. Day (p. 24) from the United States Railroad and Mining Register.

[378] Mr. Day (quoting Fergusson’s Illustrations of Ancient Architecture in Hindostan, London, 1848) cautions his readers that ‘Mr. Fergusson’s dates are not to be relied on, however important his writings unquestionably are in other respects’ (p. 168). Here again we see the misleading influence of the Sanskritists, who have allowed themselves to be cozened by the ‘mild Hindu.’ Mr. Day inclines (p. 151) to the tenth century b.c. (!), when the peoples of India were, we have reason to believe, the merest savages.

[379] The modern Hindus call steel Paldah, from the Persian Pulád, the Arab. Fulád. They apply to Spanish steel the terms Ispát, Sukhela and Tolad. Their favourite trial of Sword-metal is with a bar of soft gold, which should leave a streak.

[380] Colonel Yule does not consider the word genuine, and with reason, as the Indo-Phœnician (‘Safá’) alphabet has no w and no z. The word first appears in ‘Experiments and Observations to investigate the Nature of a Kind of Steel manufactured at Bombay, and there called Wootz,’ ... by G. Pearson, M.D. (paper read before the Royal Soc., June 11, 1795). He notes that ‘Dr. Scott of Bombay, in a letter to the President, acquainted him that he had sent over “specimens of a substance known by the name of wootz, which is considered to be a kind of steel, and is in high esteem among the Indians”’ (p. 322). In Wilkinson’s Engines of War (1841) we read (pp. 203–206), ‘The cakes of steel are called wootz.’

Dr. E. Balfour states that uchhá and níchhá (in Hindustani ‘high’ and ‘low’) are used in the Canarese provinces to denote superior and inferior descriptions of articles, and that Wootz may be a corruption of the former. Colonel Yule and his coadjutor in the Glossary of Indian Terms, the late lamented Dr. Burnell, hold that it originated in some clerical error or misreading, perhaps from wook representing the Canarese ukku = steel.

[381]

C.{	combined	1·333
	uncombined	0·312
Si.		0·045
S.		0·181
As.		0·037
Fe. (by difference)		98·092
		100·000

Phillips, Metallurgy, p. 317. Faraday found in Wootz 0·0128–0·0695 per cent. of aluminium, and attributed the ‘damask’ of the blades to its presence. Karsten, after three experiments, and Mr. T. H. Henry, failed to detect it, and suggested that it may have been derived from intermingled slag containing silicate of alumina (Percy, Iron, &c. pp. 183–84).

[382] Archiv. Port. Oriental. fascic. iii. p. 318.

[383] M. Keller (Pres. Soc. Ant. Switz.) notes that crudely formed lumps and quadrangular blocks of malleable iron, double pyramids weighing 10–16 lbs., have been found in prehistoric sites. They were probably produced in primitive Catalans. Pieces of iron slag worked by the Kelts were discovered in 1862 on the Cheviot Hills.

[384] The cupel (of old copel) is the French coupelle, little coupe. The muffle is a metal cupel.

[385] This is the process of working Wootz given by Mr. Heath; others pack the metal with finely-chopped stalks of asclepias as well as cassia. Mr. Mallet has described the Indian manufacture of large iron masses in The Engineer, vol. xxxiii. pp. 19, 20. Beckmann (loc. cit. sub v. ‘Steel’) notices the bloomeries or furnaces. The Penny Cyclopædia and Ure’s Dict. of Chemistry (the latter the best), London, Longmans, 1839, may also be consulted. Dr. Percy gives a long account (pp. 254–66) of iron-smelting in India from Mr. Howard Blackwell. He notes three kinds of furnaces:—

1. Rude, like chimney-pots; used by the hill-tribes of Western India, the Deccan, and the Carnatic.
2. Simple Catalan forge	}	Central India and the
3. Early form of Stückofen		N.W. Provinces.

The anvil is a square iron without beak. Three kinds of Indian bellows are noticed (pp. 255–56). The people, who love stare super antiquas vias, ignore the hot blast: this contrivance causes a more active combustion, an ‘ultimate fact’ as yet unexplained.

[386] Report of 1852.

[387] The dialect is much more ancient than we usually suppose: it existed long before Akbar the Great and his ‘Urdú zabán’ (camp language), for we find that the poet Chand wrote in it during the twelfth century.

[388] As will appear in Part II. there are many processes for making the Damascus; the exact markings, however, are best produced by that noticed above.

[389] Pp. 270–3, from the descriptions of Mr. W. T. Blanford, of the Geol. Survey of India.

[390] Pp. 273–5; borrowed from Travels in Borneo, by Dr. C. A. L. M. Schauer during 1843–47, p. 109.

[391] The Swords of the Borneo Dyaks and the islanders of Timor and Rotti are photographed by the Curator of the Christy Collection.

[392] Mr. Day quotes, book i., the Tribute of Yu, Legge’s Chinese Classics, vol. iii. part i. p. 121 (Trübner, London, 1865).

[393] The ‘Celestial Empire,’ according to her annals, began b.c. 100,000–80,000; the date being probably astronomical, or rather astrological, founded, like the four Hindu æras, upon retrograde calculations. The first cycle of 60 years is attributed to the Emperor Hwang-tí, and its initiation to the 61st year of his reign, in b.c. 2637 (the Twelfth Dynasty of Egypt?). The first historical dates are given in b.c. 651, a century after the foundation of Rome: these figures afford a curious contrast between pretensions and proof. But as Englishmen after long residence ‘grow black’ in Africa, and have become semi-Hinduised in India, so in China they have allowed themselves to be imposed upon by the ‘magna fabulositas,’ the marvellous self-sufficiency of astute semi-barbarians. ‘China is a sea that salts all the rivers which flow into it.’ Yet I am curious to ascertain by actual travel if China ever possessed a centre of civilisation independent of what she received from the West; in other words, non-Egyptian.

[394] Of the 214 keys or radicals. The first three arithmetical figures are lines disposed horizontally, while the Egyptians wrote them vertically. In his Terminal Table (affixed to this chapter) Mr. Day assigns Chinese to the ‘Sporadic or Allophyllian family.’ I believe it to be the oldest and, as far as we know, the original form of Turanian speech, a kind of tertium quid deduced from the so-called ‘Aryan’ and ‘Semitic’ elements of Egyptian.

[395] Trans. Bib. Archæol. 1879. Sayce’s Grammar gives 522 Assyrian characters.

[396] The lump of iron worked into a mass more or less rectangular is called a bloom, from the Saxon bloma, metal in mass (Bosworth): Bloma ferri occurs in the Domesday Book. Hence ancient furnaces were called bloomeries; the Elizabethan spelling is a bloomary. The blooms were beaten out to bars.

[397] In Persia I was told that this was one of the ‘secrets’ of making the finest Khorasáni blades.

[398] It followed the Mongols and preceded the Manchow Tartars, who still reign.

[399] This process of converting iron to steel is first described in ‘Alchemiæ Gebri (El-Gabr), Arabis philosophi solertissimi, Libri, &c., Joan. Petreius Nurembergen̄. denuo Bernæ excudi faciebat. anno 1545.’ The Arab, known to Albertus Magnus, flourished in the eighth to the ninth century. According to Beckmann, he noticed the ore cineritii (cupellation) et cementi (cementation) tolerans. The mixture is usually of sal ammoniac, borax, alum, and fine salt: the many varieties are described by Percy, Ure, and a host of others. Compare also Ure’s account of cast-steel and of shear-steel, the latter so called because cloth-shears were forged of it.

[400] At least it would so appear from the following passage (p. 176): ‘When we examine the etymology of ‘pole,’ or ‘pillar,’ thus—Saxon, pol or pal; German, Pfahl; Danish, paal or pol; Swedish, pale; Welsh pawl—we arrive at the Latin palus, which, besides signifying a pole or stake, is also the φαλλός of the Greeks, Mahadeva (?) or Linga (?) of the Hindoos, Bel or Baal (?) of the Chaldeans, Yakhveh (?) of the Canaanites, Ti-mohr of the ancient Irish, and Teih-mo of the Chinese,’ &c.

[401] Notes from Mr. Henderson’s Diary during a Ramble through Shansi, in March 1874, published by Mr. Day (Appendix D, p. 251). Colonel Yule (Marco Polo, ii. 429), alluding to these enormous deposits of coal and metal, says: ‘Baron Richtofen, in the paper which we quote from, indicates the revolution in the deposit of the world’s wealth and power, to which such facts, combined with other characteristics of China, point as probable; a revolution so vast that its contemplation seems like that of a planetary catastrophe.’

[402] Les Mondes, tome xxvi., Dec. 1871.

[403] Polynesian Researches (Rev. William Ellis).

[404] Researches into the Early History of Mankind, p. 167.

[405] Unless greatly mistaken, I have seen iron tools made of hæmatite near the old Gongo Socco gold-mines of Minas Geraes, in the Brazil. Worked hæmatite is also mentioned in Cyprus by General Palma (di Cesnola). See chap. ix.

[406] From Nature (Sept. 30, 1875); quoted by Mr. Day (pp. 217–19).

[407] Flint Chips, by Edmund T. Stevens, p. 553 (London: Bell & Daldy, 1870).

[408] The ‘plummet’ is figured (No. cxxxii.) in the American Naturalist (vol. vi. p. 643).

[409] The people of Camarones River, Bight of Biafra, work up old cask and bale hoops into very creditable edge-tools and weapons, hoes, knives, and Swords (Rev. G. Grenfell, Proc. Roy. Geolog. Soc. Oct. 1882).

[410] The origin of the modern process is still debated. Agricola (nat. 1494, ob. 1555) notices both malleable and cast iron. Dr. Percy (p. 578) quotes from Mr. M. A. Lower (Contributions to Literature, &c. 1854) that Burwash Church, Sussex, contains a cast-iron slab of the fourteenth century with ornamental cross and inscription in relief. The same authority declares that iron cannon were first cast at Buxted (Buckstead in Sussex) by Philip Hoge or Hogge in 1543 (35 Henry VIII.); and that his successor, Thomas Johnson, made ordnance pieces for the Duke of Cumberland weighing 6,000 lbs.

[411] Dr. Percy (pp. 764 et seq.) notices the three processes of making steel (iron containing carbon in certain proportions): 1. The addition of carbon to malleable iron; 2. The partial decarburisation of cast iron; and 3. The addition of malleable iron to cast iron.

[412] I borrow from O Muata Cazembe (Kazembe, the King) a rude sketch (p. 38) of one of the better kinds of iron-smelting furnaces used by the extensive Maráve race dwelling north of the Zambeze (River of Fish), which Europeans persist in miswriting Zambesi. The bellows, it will be remarked, are almost of European shape; but this peculiarity may be attributed to the artist.

[413] Travels, pp. 275–77 (London, 1749).

[414] Colonel A. Lane Fox (Prim. Warfare, i. 38) believes that the ‘Fans and Kafirs (Caffres) are totally different races.’ But both speak dialects of the same tongue, the great South African language. Modern African travellers have traced community of customs from north to south, and from east to west, suggesting extensive intercourse, in former days, throughout the length and breadth of the Dark Continent.

[415] Across Africa, chap. xix., July 1874 (Daldy, Isbister & Co., London, 1877).

[416] Missionary Travels, p. 402 (London, 1857).

[417] Anthrop. Coll. pp. 128–134. ‘Specimens illustrating the geographical distribution of corrugated iron blades, or blades with an ogee section, double skin bellows, and iron work.’ As regards the ogee section, the author should have compared it with the arrow-heads whose plane sides are ‘bellied on a twist’ to cause rotation or rifling.

[418] Diogenes Laertius tells us of Anacharsis only that he ‘wrote also about war.’

[419] As all savage races show, the original anchor was a stone first bound round like a celt, and then pierced for a rope: hence the ‘fugitive stone’ used by the Argonauts as an anchor (Pliny, xxxvii. 24). In the spring of 1880 eight stone anchors of modern shape were found in Piræus harbour, and were sent to the Nautical School at Athens.

[420] Wilkinson, i. 174. Mr. Day, pp. 86, 87.

[421] Hence, too, we see our ‘bellows’ = ‘bellies.’

[422] This word is curiously corrupted in Europe. It is formed upon the model of Dár-Wadái, &c.; and means the abode, region, home (Dár) of the For tribe. My lamented friend General Purdy (Pasha) formerly of the United Slates Army, admirably surveyed it, and died at Cairo in 1881.

[423] Vulgo Kattywár; described in 1842 by Captain (the late Sir G. Le Grand) Jacob in his Report on Guzerat (Gujarát).

[424] The sticks correspond with the strings on the bellows of the Egyptian monuments.

[425] Iron, Jan. 8, 1876.

[426] I observe that M. Terrien de la Couperie has lately derived the oldest civilisation of China from Chaldæo-Babylonia of the Akkadian Ages, b.c. 2400–2300.

[427] Major Jähns (p. 416) would derive Schwert (= das Sausende, Schwirrende, i.e. whizzing) from the Sansk. svar, noise; and considers it originally a missile pure and simple. He quotes Isidore, who explains rhomphæa by wafan; Schwert and framea = asta vel gladius; ensis = hevas, hevassa; mucro = swert, gladius = wafan; culter = wafansahs, sahse. In the hebraising days Sword was derived from Sharat, to scratch, and Sabre from Shabar, to shiver.

[428] Of the Flamberge and the ‘flamboyant,’ or wavy blade, more hereafter.

[429] Muratori (Antiq. ii. 487) notes, ‘Spatam sive spontonem, and sponto, spunto, i.e. pugio’ (Adelung). Of spatha more to come.

[430] Or ‘die Schneide,’ the older forms being ekke, egge; while ‘valz’ was the middle section of the two-handed Sword.

[431] ‘Chape,’ derived from capa, and a congener of ‘cap’ and ‘cape,’ is differently used by authors. Some apply it to the mouthpiece or ring at the top of the sheath; others to the metal crampet, bouterolle, or ferule at the scabbard-tip, and others to the guard-plate. In Durfey (The Marriage-Hater Matched) we find ‘the hilt, the knot, the scabbard, the chape, the belt, and the buckles’ (of a Sword). Skinner explains it as vaginæ mucro ferreus. Mr. Fairholt defines chape to be the guard-plate or cross-bar at the junction of grip and hilt. Shakespeare, who knew the Sword, speaks of the ‘chape of his dagger’ (All’s Well &c. iv. 3) and ‘an old rusty Sword with a broken hilt and chapelesse’ (Taming of the Shrew, iii. 2). Commentators mostly explain this by ‘without a catch to hold it.’ Dr. Evans (Bronze, &c. chap. viii.) has exhaustively described the bronze chapes (bouterolles) in the British Islands.

[432] A congener of our ‘quill,’ from the Lat. caulis, a stalk. Littré is not satisfactory: ‘Quillon (ki-llon, ll mouillées), s.m. Partie de la monture du sabre ou de l’épée, située du côté opposé aux branches, et dont l’extrémité est arrondie. Dérivé de quille’ (cone) ‘par assimilation de forme’ (in fact, incrementative of) ‘quille. Etym. Génev. quille; de l’anc. haut-allem. Kegil; allem. Kegel, objet allongé en forme conique, quille.’ Burn translates quillon ‘cross-bar of the hilt of an infantry or light-cavalry Sword.’

[433] This must not be written, as by some English authors, pas d’ane. ‘Pas d’âne, instrument avec lequel on maintient ouverte la bouche du cheval pour l’examiner.’ Littré has: ‘Pas d’âne, nom donné, dans les épées du xvi^ème siècle, à des pièces de la garde qui sont en forme d’anneau, et qui vont des quillons à la lame. “Le Seigneur le prit et mit un pied sur la lame ... alors Collinet s’écria: Venez voir, messieurs, le grand miracle que l’on fait à mon épée; je l’ai apportée ici avec une simple poignée et sans garde défensive, et voilà maintenant que l’on y met le plus beau pas d’âne du monde.”’ Francion, vi. p. 237: ‘Pas d’âne, nom vulgaire du tussilage, à cause de la feuille.’

[434] The Scottish basket-hilt, however, requires improvement, as it does not allow free play to hand or wrist.

[435] The word is originally the Persian Shamshír (شمشير); but as the Greeks have no sh sound, it made its way into Europe curiously disguised. Jean Chartier (temp. Charles VII.) says, ‘Sauveterres ou cimeterres qui sont manière d’espée à la Turque.’ Sauveterre became in Italian salvaterra; and in England scymitar was further degraded to semitarge. I have no objection to scimitar, but scymitar is the older form.

[436] See note at the end of this chapter.

[437] As usual, the diagram is an exaggeration. It directs the thrusting weapon too low, at the antagonist’s breast, not his eye; nor is it necessary to raise the hand so high in order to deliver the cut.

[438] Quoted from Mr. John Latham by Colonel A. Lane Fox, Anthrop. Coll. p. 171. Concerning the drawing cut and its reverse, the thrusting cut, I shall have more to say when treating of the ‘Damascus’ blade in Part II.

[439] The section of the modern weapon shows that the baïonnette Gras is fit only for the thrust; and, as it stops its own cut, it is useless for the menial and servile offices in which the Yataghan-bayonet, like the old coupe-choux Sword, did yeoman’s service. I can see no improvement upon the old-fashioned triangular bayonet, which amongst us has been superseded by the short Enfield Sword-bayonet. To the latter I should prefer even the bowie-knife bayonet, of which the Washington Arsenal was once full, and which has been used even lately in the United States. None but practical soldiers realise the fact that the bayonet is meant to be a bayonet, not a Sword, nor a dagger, nor a chopper, nor a saw.

[440] Mr. Wareing Faulder (Exhibition of Industrial Art, Manchester, June and July, 1881, Catalogue, p. 24) suggests that the Colichemarde ‘fell into disuse probably in consequence of its costliness, combined with its inelegant appearance when sheathed.’

[441] Captain George Chapman, in his Foil Practice, &c., a book which will appear in the ‘Bibliography’ (Part III.), rightly distinguishes between the triangular small-Sword, used only for thrusting, and the bi-convex cut-and-thrust ‘rapier,’ a term applied by the Germans to the Schläger, which has no point. In England most people use ‘small-Sword’ only in opposition to ‘broadsword’; but, as the Art of Fencing may be considered a general foundation for swordsmanship, all men-at-arms should understand and preserve the difference. The writer, however, observes (Notes, pp. 4, 5), that, among the various actions which may conveniently be executed with the triangular ‘Biscayan,’ there are many which cannot be so easily managed with a flat blade, or with the usual weapon of modern combat, however light and handy. Hence ‘fencers among military men should be cautioned against indiscriminately attempting with the Sword performances usually taught in lessons with the foil.’

[442] It was also a proper name applied to the Paladin Renaud’s Sword. The flamberge of the seventeenth century became a rapier-blade, and no longer ‘flamboyant,’ and the difference is in the hilt, and especially the guards. The latter were shallower and simpler than the rapier form, and were more easily changed from hand to hand, as was the practice of early fencers.

[443] There is another Dáo in the Eastern regions, a large, square, double-edged blade, with a handle attached to the centre. The Dah of Burma is originally the same weapon as the Nágá Dáo.

[444] In the Bulletin de l’Institut Egyptien (deuxième série, No. 1, année 1880) there is an admirable paper on Eastern heraldry, ‘Le blason chez les Princes musulmans,’ by E. T. Rogers Bey. He proves that a heraldic scutcheon is known to the Arabs as rank, plur. runúk, and that the word is the Persian rang, colour, from which he would derive our (man of) ‘rank,’ a word hitherto unsatisfactorily explained. As regards the tints, ‘azure’ is evidently the Persian lájawardi; and ‘gules’ is better derived from gul, a rose, than from Fr. gueules (jaw), which is L. Lat. gula, reddened skin. These three words suggest that for the origin of heraldry in its present form we must go back to Persia. Of the Sword in European heraldry I shall have more to say in Part II.

[445] Strange to say, these Sword-names are carefully omitted from Liddell and Scott, 1869.

[446] The information was kindly forwarded to me by Captain F. M. Hunter, Assistant Political Resident, Aden. Along the blade runs the inscription, which will be quoted in Part II., and the characters appear modern. My informant thinks that this Chelidonian does not represent the original Zú’l-Fikár, which was two-edged.

[447] This trophy hangs against the staircase wall of the fine armoury belonging to the Museo del Arsenale (Naval Arsenal), Venice. Here, however, it has become a complicated affair with Koranic inscription (ch. xl. vol. i.); open-jawed dragons’ heads at the hilt, and below the handle a rosette with various complications of ‘Yá’ (Allah!).

[448] It is figured in the illustrations following the Antiquities of Orissa, by Rajendra Lala Mitra.

[449] Capt. Cameron and I exhibited a specimen, made for us by good King Blay of Attábo, at a special meeting of the Anthropological Institute of London.

[450] The Austrian geographer, Dr. Josef Chavanne, estimates the mean altitude of Africa at 2,170 feet (round numbers), or more than double that of Europe (971 feet, M. G. Leipoldt).

[451] He makes his Ethiopians emigrate from India to Egypt—but where? when? how? The ‘Asiatic Æthiopians’ of Herodotus lie between the Germanii (Persian Kerman) and the Indus (iii. 93, &c.). The bas-reliefs of Susiana show negroid types, and Texier found the Lamlam tribe in the marshes round the head of the Persian Gulf to resemble the Bisharin of Upper Egypt. Was the Buddha one of these Cushite Ethiopians?

[452] Monumental History, &c.

[453] The late Mr. Lane, who was greatly attached to Cairo and its population, insisted upon the Arab origin and kinship of the Egyptian. To those who know both races they appear as different as Englishmen and Greeks. Place an Arab, especially a Bedawi, by the side of a Fellah, and the contrast will strike the least experienced eye.

[454] The first instalment was sent in May 1881 to the Royal College of Surgeons for the benefit of Professor Flower and Dr. C. Carter Blake. I am aware of the difficulty in determining mummy-dates, but the fact of mummification shows a certain antiquity whose later limit is sharply defined. The mummy of King Mer en Rá (Sixth Dynasty), found near the Sakkarah pyramids, had been stripped of its bandages; but the marks impressed upon the skin showed that the system was that of later years. He can hardly be dated later than b.c. 3000; and, reckoning from that period to a.d. 700, when mummifying ceased, we have a population of embalmed bodies of some 730,000,000 in round numbers.

[455] The hair is of intermediate type between negro and Malay. The Nilotes are οὐλότριχοι and ἐριόκομοι, with woolly locks, slightly flat like ribbons, evenly distributed (not in peppercorns) over the scalp. It is also a mistake to make the Nubians λισσότριχοι: none of the Nile Valley races are lank-haired like Hindús, Chinese, and Australians.

[456] The full number of Herodotus is 52,000 years. Mr. Day (p. 59) is scandalised by these dates, which argue for the ‘high antiquity theory’; and appears astonished to find ‘anything placed centuries previous to the Noahitic Deluge.’ Of this more presently.