Fig. 180.—Dankali Sword.
Our age has at length realised the fact that the heart of Africa is inhabited by a homogeneous race speaking tongues of the same family. It is a large and strong-bodied people, often cannibal, and showing no likeness with the negro of the tobacconist-shops. Scattered amongst these man-eaters, and possibly the aborigines of the country, are comparatively dwarfish tribes, evidently the crane-fighting Pygmies of Homer and Herodotus, now known from their various clans, Aká, Tikitiki, Doko, Wambilikimo (two-cubiters), and so forth. Both the dwarfs and the (comparative) giants, of whom the Mpángwe, or Fans, first became known in Europe, are metal workers, and both work well. They despise arms and tools that chip and snap, and therefore prefer to ours, with ample reason, their charcoal-smelted native produce, and they temper it by many successive heatings and hammerings without water-quenching.[521] According to Major Serpa Pinto (ii. 128) the Barotse temper their iron with ox-grease[522] and salt. He notes, however (ii. 356), that the Ganguellas ‘manufacture steel out of wrought iron, tempered by cold water, into which the metal is thrown while hot.’
The Gaboon river also produces the Babanga[523] (?), a leaf-shaped Sword with a square end, made at Batta, and used by the Mpángwe; a Glaive also leaf-shaped with a long handle, having a point at the butt end, and Swords with triangular blades more or less broadened at the apex.
Upon the glorious Congo river[524] I was shown a Sword belonging to the Mijolos or Mijeres, a tribe inhabiting the upper valley. All declared it to be of native make, and used during the Sword-dance performed in presence of the Prince. But it is an evident copy of some weapon of the fifteenth century; and the knightly model, like that of the Mpángwe (Fan) crossbow, had drifted into the African interior. The handle and its pommel were of ivory (in poorer weapons wood is used): the guard was a thin bar of iron springing from the junction of blade and grip; forming an open oval-shaped pas d’âne below, and prolonged upwards and downwards in two quillons or branches, parallel with the hilt and protecting the hand. The blade, which had a tang for hefting, was straight, flexible, and double-edged.
AFRICAN SWORDS.
In the Despotism of Unyoro, on the northern shores of the (Victoria) Nyanza Lake, Sir Samuel Baker found a knife of the Egyptian leaf-shape, the Lingua di Bove of the Italians. The blade has a high mid-rib, and the handle is whipped round with copper wire. It is evidently used, like the Somal weapon, for stabbing as well as cutting.
Fig. 182.—Unyoro Dagger-Sword.
