THE CORRUGATION IN AFRICAN SWORD BLADES AND OTHER 



WEAPONS. 



BY WALTER HOUGH. 



There is a feature in African iron weapons of nearly all descriptions 

 of a flexure in the median line of swords, knives, assagais, arrows, etc. 

 The horizontal section of a weapon with this characteristic is like a 

 thin letter S, or Hogarth's line of beauty, with a little less curve at the 

 edges than the latter. In some weapons it is a strongly marked ogee 

 corrugation. On each face a portion of the blade is sank on one side 

 only, and on the other face the depression is on the reverse side. 



There has been much conjecture by ethnologists and collectors as to 

 the use of this notable structure. It has been supposed to determine 

 a spiral flight in weapons. As it occurs not only in missile weapons, 

 as arrows and assagais, but also in trenchant weapons, as knives, 

 swords, bills, and short sword-knives of the Congo natives, where the 

 peculiarity is useless, this reason is not valid. It has also been called 

 a "blood groove," and such fanciful stories about its purpose to retain 

 blood of enemies, or to cause a wound made by a weapon to bleed more 

 freely, may be dismissed with scant notice. Burton, in his exhaustive 

 work "The Sword" (p. 170), calls attention to the remark by Col. A. 

 Lane Fox on the African corrugated sword in Anthrop. Coll., p. 135, 

 but makes no explanation of it. He makes, however, the interesting 

 remark that this peculiarity is persistent in all the swords obtained 

 from the Caucasus, and that the iron blades of Saxon and Frankish 

 spears found in graves in England and France possess it. 



In examining a short or half sword brought by Lieut. E. II. Taunt, 

 U. S. Navy, from the recently explored country of the Bakoubas, on 

 the Kassai River, Africa, I was led to believe that the semi-fold in the 

 blade was only a very effective way of making a thin, soft-iron blade 

 rigid on the principle of the hollow column. 



The sword spoken of (Catalogue No. 129,929) has a leaf-shaped 

 blade, only 12 inches long, while it is nearly 8 inches wide. The blade, 

 a very superior piece of blacksmithing, is like thin sheet-iron, yet it is 

 made very strong and unyielding by this device. 



I think that wherever blades of thin, soft iron are to be made we 

 will find this ogee fold, as in the backs of scythes, etc. The bronze 

 scythes, sickles, and some knives of the Lake Dwellers were strength- 

 ened in that way as in ours, and the spears of the Franks and Saxons 

 required it too, because they were of soft iron. From what we have 

 seen this is an invention of no mean antiquity, and it is held that the 

 reason assigned is a vera causa in the matter under consideration. 



U. S. National Museum, October 30, 18S8. 



IT'.' 



