Fig. 193.—Cleaver of the Habshi People.
The Habshi people inhabiting Janjhíra (El Jezírah = the island), off the West Coast of India, south of Bombay, retain a curious relic of their African origin. These negroids, who call themselves Abyssinians, are originally Wásawáhíli from Zanzibar. Their cleaver is a straightened Khopsh wholly of iron, handle, plain cross-guard and pommel (fig. 193). The blade is fifteen inches broad, the back is an inch and a half thick, and the weapon is as heavy as a man can wield. These ex-pirates, under the Habshi Nawwáb, are still feared, on account of their great strength[532] and violent temper, by all their effeminate Indian neighbours. It is well to note that in case of another ‘Indian Mutiny,’ we can easily raise on the eastern coast of Africa a negroid force sufficient to put it down.
Fig. 194.—Frankish Blade, with Mid-Groove out of Centre.
Colonel A. Lane-Fox[533] remarks that one of the most peculiar forms of Sword used in Africa is the corrugated, having an ogee-section. On each face a portion of the blade is sunk on one side only, and on the other face the depression is on the reverse side. Thus the transverse section somewhat resembles the angles of the letter Z. We can understand the use of this device when adapted to the pile of the arrow or the javelin. It would give the weapon a rotatory motion on the principle of the screw-propeller, the action being only reversed instead of the screw propelling itself by acting upon the surrounding medium: in this case the air impinges upon the screw flanges and rotates the arrow, thereby increasing the accuracy of its flight. But the peculiarity has been preserved where it is wholly useless; and, curious to say, this ogee-form is persistent in all the Swords obtained from the Caucasus, while the iron blades of Saxon and Frankish spears discovered in the graves of England and France have the same distinctive. Both may have derived it from Egypt: the Caucasians through Colchis, and Western Europe by means of the Phœnicians. The illustration is taken from the ‘Pagan Saxondom’ of Mr. J. Y. Akerman, who was the first to draw attention to the strange resemblance between the Saxon and Hottentot spears.[534]
Thus we see that whilst Egypt originated the three shapes of Sword-blades—straight, curved, and half-curved—the rest of Africa invented positively nothing in hoplology. Negroids and negroes either borrowed their weapons from Egypt or imported them from beyond the sea. Intertropical Africa never imagined an alphabet, a plough, or a Sword.
CHAPTER IX.
THE SWORD IN KHITA-LAND, PALESTINE AND CANAAN; PHŒNICIA AND CARTHAGE; JEWRY, CYPRUS, TROY, AND ETRURIA.
Centuries before the Hebrews had left the Delta, a great empire bounded Nile-land on the Asiatic side, reflecting Egypt as the New World reflects the Old; in fact what Kemi was to the West, that Khita-land was to the East. The people were known to the Nile-dwellers as the Khita, Kheta, or Sheta of
