Page:Seven Years in South Africa v2.djvu/409

 Such knives as are used for particular purposes, like wood-carving, and those that are worn as weapons of defence, are longer in the blade, and altogether more carefully made than the common domestic knives; slightly curved at the end, they are made very strong at the back, and are often found highly ornamented, the handles, into which they are well secured, being usually flat, and occasionally elaborately carved.

The kiris, just as they were elsewhere, were short round sticks, with a knob at one end. Amongst the Marutse they were made either of some hard kind of wood or of rhinoceros horn. Those of wood are the more common. The knobs are about as large as a man’s fist, and are not unfrequently scooped out. Ordinarily, the stick part is about two feet long, and from one inch to two inches thick; it is more often than not highly polished; its extremity is sometimes sharpened, sometimes rounded, and examples are met with from time to time in which the end is finished off by an iron ferule.

No weapon of defence is so important as the shield. The Marutse, however, do not excel in its manufacture, like the tribes farther south; what they use is generally made of black and white cow-hide, and is upon the whole very like the shield of the Bechuanas, though larger than that of the Zulus or Masarwas.

As the last in my list of weapons, I may refer to the long sticks that are used for defensive purposes; many of these run from six to eight feet in length, their usual thickness being only about an inch; both ends terminate in a ferule of twisted iron.

At the time of my brief sojourn in the district, the