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The wooden Sword, as we see from its wide dispersion, must have arisen spontaneously among the peoples who had reached that stage of civilisation where it became necessary.[105] These weapons were found in the hands of the Indians of Virginia by the well-known Captain John Smith. Writing in 1606, Oldfield describes swords of heavy black wood in the Sandwich Islands, and Captain Owen Stansley in New Guinea. Mr. Consul Hutchinson notes the wooden swords used by the South American Itonanamas, a sub-tribe of the Maxos. Those preserved in Ireland and others brought from the Samoa Islands will be noticed in a future page. They may mostly be characterised as flat clubs sharpened at the edge, and used like our steel blades.

Fig. 33.—Lisán in Egypt and Abyssinia.

The shape of the wooden sword greatly varies, and so does its origin. Mr. Tylor fell into the mistake, so common in these classifying, generalising, and simplifying days, of deriving the sabre, because it is a cutting tool, from the axe, and the tuck or rapier from the spear because it thrusts. Wooden sword-blades alone have three prototypes, viz.:—