WHAT DOES FULL TANG BOWIE KNIFE MEAN?

just after his three-12 months stay in California in the course of the peak with the gold rush, creator Hinton R. Helper wrote, “I've witnessed purer liquors, much better segars [sic], finer tobacco, truer guns and pistols, larger dirk and Bowie knives, and prettier courtesans in this article in San Francisco than in some other put I have ever fr