Three
blades showed the usual chopping-bill shape, pierced, like fish-slicers,
with round, semicircular, and angular holes. One, measuring twenty-three
inches and three-quarters, was leaf-formed, dotted with a lozenge-pattern
and set with copper studs. Another was partially saw-toothed. All were of
iron, rusty with the rust of years and hardly sharp enough to cut a pat of
butter. The impossible handles were worthy of the blades, bulging grips
between two huge balls utterly unfitted for handling; four were covered
with thin gold-plate in _repousse_ work, and one with silver. The metal
was sewn together with thin wire, and the joints had been hammered to hide
them. Cameron sketched them for my coming 'Book of the Sword;' and Ahin
Blay kept his promise by sending me a specimen of the weapon with two
divergent blades used to cut off noses and ears. Bowdich [Footnote:
_Mission_, &c., p. 312] mentions finely-worked double blades springing
parallel from a single handle; here nothing was known about them.
The band consisted of two horns and three drums. Of the latter one was
sheathed in leopard-skin and rubbed, not struck, with two curved sticks. A
second was hourglass-shaped; the sticks were bent to right angles, and the
drummer carried, by way of cymbal, a small round iron plate adjusted to
the fingers with little rings loosely set in the edge.
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