This is another of those "look at, digest and come back later to look again" pieces.
Rather than being a military item, I suspect that it's either a settler's item, an overseer's item or a colonist's piece, such as a profesional hunter or such.
My basic "gut feeling" is that it was made to be used in Africa, rather than to be taken home and showed off, with India coming in a distant 2nd.
While nothing more than the meerest indicator, I've got an antique sword cane that's ENTIRELY leather wrapped, made in the distinctive "western" style and with a definite hand-forged blade that has the same pattern worked into the leather as is shown in the scabbard.
The only thing about the cane that I'm 100% sure of, by the way, is that is NOT human skin, as was related to me when I recieved it, an attribution almost solely reserved for African leatherworks.
The aluminum band at the bottom and the rubber tip were my own contributions as I used it for a while, PRE-9/11.
Mike
|