lade that we have all read about, but
so few have seen, is as rigid as cast-iron, without any spring
whatever,--as rigid as the blade of a razor. The sword-blade which bends
is neither good for cut nor thrust, even in the hands of the most expert
and powerful swordsman. A blade of spring steel will not cut through the
bone; directly it encounters a hard substance, it quivers in the hand
and will not cut through. Let any sword-maker in Birmingham try
different blades in the hands of an expert swordsman on a green tree of
soft wood, and the rigid blade of well-tempered steel will cut four
times as deep as the blade of highly tempered spring steel which you can
bend into a circle, tip to hilt. My opinion is that the motto of a
sword-blade ought to be the same as the Duke of Sutherland's--"_Frangas
non flectes_, Thou mayest break but not bend"; and if blades could be
made that would neither break nor bend, so much the better.

I believe that the manufacture of real Damascus steel blades is a lost
art. When serving in the Punjab about thirty years ago, I was well
acquainted with an old man in Lahore who had been chief armourer to
Runjeet Sing, and he has often told me that the real Damascus blades
contained a large percentage of arsenic amalgamated with the steel while
the blades were being forged, which greatly added to their hardness,
toughness, and strength, preserved the steel from rust, and enabled the
blades to be sharpened to a very fine edge. This old man's test for a
sword-blade was to get a good-sized fish, newly caught from the river,
lay it on a soft, yielding bed,--cotton quilt folded up, or any soft
yielding substance,--and the blade that did not cut the fish in two
across the thickest part behind the gills, cutting against the scales,
at one stroke, was considered of no account whatever. From what I have
seen no sword-blade that bends, however sharp it may be, will do that,
because the spring in the steel causes the blade to glance off the fish,
and the impetus of the cut is lost by the blade quivering in the hand.
Nor will any of our straight sword-blades cut a large fish through in
this manner; whereas the curved Oriental blade, with a drawing cut,
severs it at once, because the curved blade presents much more cutting
surface. One revolution of a circular saw cuts much deeper into wood
than one stroke of a straight saw, although the length of the straight
saw may be equal to the circumference of the circular