In the tumuli of Western North America, Mr. Lewis Morgan, the ‘historian of the Iroquois,’ mentions that, when opening the ‘burial mounds’ of the Far West, rows of flint-flakes occurred lying side by side in regular order; they had probably been fastened into sticks or swords like the Mexican. Hernandez[148] describes the ‘Mahquahuitl’ or Aztec war-club as armed on both sides with razor-like teeth of ‘Itzli’ (obsidian), stuck into holes along the edge, and fastened with a kind of gum. Mr. P. T. Stevens (‘Flint Chips,’ p. 297) says that this Mexican broadsword had six or more teeth on either side of the blade. Herrera, the historian, mentions, in his ‘Decads,’ ‘Swords made of wood having a gutter in the fore part, in which the sharp-edged flints were strongly fixed with a sort of bitumen and thread.’[149] In 1530, according to contemporary Spanish historians, Copan was defended by 30,000 warmen, armed with these and other weapons,[150] especially with fire-hardened spears. The same have been represented in the sculptures of Yucatan, which imitated the Aztecs. Lord Kingsborough’s ruinous work on Mexican antiquities, mostly borrowed from Dupaix, shows a similar contrivance (_b_ and _c_). A Sword having six pieces of obsidian in each side of the blade, is to be seen in a museum in Mexico.[151] A Mexican Sword of the fifteenth century is of iron-wood, twenty-five inches long, and armed with ten flakes of black obsidian; and the same is the make of another Mexican Sword nearly four feet long.[152] [Illustration: FIG. 65.—MAHQUAHUITLS.] [Illustration: FIG. 66.—MEXICAN WARRIOR.] [Illustration: FIG. 67.—MEXICAN SWORD, IRON-WOOD, ARMED WITH OBSIDIAN. (One metre eight inches long.)] [Illustration: FIG. 68.—MEXICAN SPEAR-HEAD (FIFTEENTH CENTURY), BLACK OBSIDIAN, WITH WOODEN HANDLE.] [Illustration: FIG. 69.—NEW ZEALAND CLUB.] The next step would be to use metal for bone and stone. So the Eskimos of Davis Strait and some of the Greenlanders show an advance in art by jagging the edge with a row of chips of meteoric iron.[153] This would lead to providing the whole wooden blade with an edge of metal, when the latter was still too rare and too expensive for the whole weapon. This economy might easily have overlapped not only the Bronze, but the Iron Epoch. The tooth-shaped edge was perpetuated in the Middle Ages, as we see by serrated and pierced blades of Italian daggers. That it is not yet extinct the absurd saw-bayonet of later years proves. [Heading: _FIRST USE OF METALS._] We now reach the time when Man, no longer contented with the baser materials—bone and teeth, horn and wood—learned the use of metals, possibly from an accidental fire, when ... a scrap of stone cast on the flame that lit his den Gave out the shining ore, and made the Lord of beasts a Lord of men.