them from well-hammered and well-tempered Celebes iron, works of art and
models for futurity. He is exceedingly punctilious in regard to their shape, size,
and general formation, and the process of giving them their beautiful water lines
is quite a ceremony. First the razor-like edges are covered with a thin coating of
wax to protect them from the action of the acids; then a mixture of boiled rice,
sulphur, and salt is put on the blade and left for seven days until a film of rust
rises to the surface. The blade is then immersed in the water of a young cocoanut
or the juice of a pineapple and left seven days longer. It is next brushed with the
juice of a lemon until all the rust is cleared away, and then rubbed with arsenic
dissolved in lime-juice and washed with cold spring water. Finally it is anointed
with cocoanut oil, and as a concluding test of its fineness and temper, it is said
that in the old days its owner would rush out into the kampong, or village, and
stab the first person he met.
The sheath of the kris is generally made of kamooning wood, but often of ivory,
gold, or silver. The handle, while more frequently of wood or buffalo horn, is
sometimes of gold studded with precious stones and worth more than all the
other possessions of its owner put together.
The kris, too, has its etiquette. It is always worn on the left side stuck into the
folds of the sarong, or skirt, the national dress of the Malay. During an interview
it is considered respectful to conceal it; and its handle is turned with its point
close to the body of the wearer, if the wearer be friendly. If, however, there is ill
blood existing, and the wearer is angry, the kris is exposed, and the point of the
handle turned the reverse way.
The kris as a weapon of offence and defence is now almost a thing of the past. It
is rapidly going the way of the tomahawk and the boomerang—into the
collector’s cabinet. There is a law in Singapore that forbids its being worn, and
outside of Johore and the native states it is seldom seen. It is still used as an
executioner’s knife by the protected Sultan of Selangor, its keen point being
driven into the heart of the victim; but in a few years that practice, too, will be
abolished by the humane intervention of the English government.
It is to be hoped that the record of the kris is not as bad as it has been painted by
some, and that at times in its bloody career it has been on the side of justice and
right. The part it took in the piracy that once made the East Indian seas so
famous was not always done for the sake of gain, but often for revenge and for