THE SPEAR AS A WEAPON OF WAR.

North Otago Times, Volume XXVIII, Issue 3972, 4 June 1885, Page 4

THE SPEAR AS A WEAPON OF WAR.

The spear and its history is coeval with man, ever since the days of our cavedwelling ancestors and their burned-tipped sticks. Its varieties are almost innumerable, from the Macedonian a.irissa to the Roman pilum ; from the Zulu assegai to the heavy Soudanese weapon. For car airy the Bpear —for the lance is only an aristocratic form of the same weapon— is as it ia so often termed, the "queen of weapons." The sabre has to give place to it when the question of supremacy is at issue. It was those terrible twelve feet Uhlan lances that in the Franco-German war scattered dragoon, hussar, and chasseur d'Afriqvie before them in almost every light. And before that time, in the war of 1813, the Cossacks of Platoff owed no little ot their prestige to their fifteen lcet long lances Perhaps the most sensible step our authorities ever took in military organisations was to keep up the Indian Irregular Cavalry as originally constituted. Each squadron of the Indian cavalry is armed, the f.ont rank with lances, the rear with sabres, ready to rush in close alter their comrades, and v c their mare handy sabres with efLct upon the broken ranks of the enemy, 'lhe sword needi but few words, developed as it had come down to our times, lrotn the long pointless blade of the primitive savage to short cut-and-thrust two feet long weapon affected by the legii nariesol ancient Rome and the rapier ol more morier-i times. The Soudanese two handed sword is Pimply the two-hnmled sword ol our own good old time-—in the days o( Flouden— adapted to suit Orieutal handling. Play ot wrist is unknown among Eastern swordsmtn ; a sweeping cut with the whole arm fro-M the shoulder is invariably employed —a sharp blow with a urawiug cut,