Admirable bows of buffalo-horn—small, but throwing far, and strong—are
still made in the Indus-valley about Multan. For this use the horns are
cut, scraped, thinned to increase elasticity; joined at the bases by
wooden splints, pegs, or nails, and made to adhere by glue and sinews.
Man would soon learn to sharpen his wooden shafts with horn-points, the
spoils of his prey. Hence the ancient Egyptians applied horn to their
light arrows of reed.[93] The Christy collection contains an arrow
from South America (?) armed with a pile of deer-horn. The Melville
Peninsula, being scant of materials, uses as arrow-piles the horns of
a musk-ox (_ovibos_, more _ovis_ than _bos_), and the thinned defences
of the reindeer strengthened by sinews. Antelope-horns are still used
as lance-points by the Nubians, the Shilluks, and the Denkas of the
Upper Nile; by the Jibbus of Central Africa, and by the tribes of the
southern continent.[94] The ‘Bantu’ or Kafir races, Zulus and others,
make their _kiri_ (kerry) either of wood or of rhinoceros-horn. It
varies from a foot to a yard long, and is capped by a knob as large
as a hen’s egg or a man’s fist: hence it is called ‘knob-stick’ or
‘throw-stick.’ The Ga-ne-u-ga-o-dus-ha (deer-horn war-club) of the
Iroquois ended in a point of about four inches long; since the people
had intercourse with Europeans they have learned to substitute metal.
The form suggests that the _martel-de-fer_ of Persia and India, used by
Europe during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, was derived from a
weapon of this kind: suitable points for arming it have been found in
England and Ireland. The Dublin Museum (case 21, Petrie) contains an
antler of the red deer converted into a thrusting weapon. The Jumbiyah
(crooked dagger) of the Arabs, the Khanjar[95] of Persia and India,
whence the Iberian Alfânge (El-Khanjar) and our silly ‘hanger,’ shows
by form and point that it was originally the half of a buffalo-horn
split longitudinally. The modern weapon, with metal blade and ivory
handle, has one side of the latter flat, betraying its origin by
retaining a peculiarity no longer required. The same is the case when
the whole Jumbiyah is, as often happens, made of metal[96] (fig. 6, p.
10).
[Illustration: FIG. 32.—HARPOON HEAD.]
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