=--These arms are axes, swords, daggers, and bucklers.
They are ordinarily found by the side of a skeleton in a coffin of
stone or wood, for warriors had their arms buried with them. But they
are found also scattered on ancient battle-fields or lost at the
bottom of a marsh which later became a turf-pit. There were found in a
turf-pit in Schleswig in one day 100 swords, 500 lances, 30 axes, 460
daggers, 80 knives, 40 stilettos--and all of iron. Not far from there
in the bed of an ancient lake was discovered a great boat 66 feet
long, fully equipped with axes, swords, lances, and knives.
It is impossible to enumerate the iron implements thus found. They
have not been so well preserved as the bronze, as iron is rapidly
eaten away by rust. At the first glance, therefore, they appear the
older, but in reality are more recent.
=Epoch of the Iron Age.=--The inhabitants of northern Europe knew iron
before the coming of the Romans, the first century before Christ. In
an old cemetery near the salt mines of Hallstadt in Austria they have
opened 980 tombs filled with instruments of iron and bronze without
finding a single piece of Roman money.
Pages:
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34