Fig. 187.—Beheading Sword.
Cutch; also used in Africa.
Fig. 188.—Wasa (Wassaw) Sword.
Gold plates on wood, sewn with wire, and then beaten until the stitches can scarcely be seen.
Fig. 189.—King Blay’s Sword.
Gold leaf stamped and beaten. Sworn by before going to war, ‘If I come back, cut my head off.’
Gezo,[527] the warrior king of Dahome or Ffon-land, who loved variety in, as well as number of, weapons, manufactured Swords with two blades like scissors. He also had in terrorem a company of ‘Amazons,’ called Razor-women, from the ‘Nyek-ple-nen-toh’ blade. This was simply a European razor on a large scale, with a steel of thirty inches rising from a plain handle of black wood, and kept open by a spring. It was used to decapitate prisoner-kings, and the very look of it made the lieges tremble.