GUNPOWDER AND FIREARMS IN EARLY AGES.

Pelorus Guardian and Miners' Advocate., Volume 15, Issue 33, 26 April 1904, Page 7

GUNPOWDER AND FIREARMS IN EARLY AGES.

With reference to the early use of gunpowder' ftpd firearms, long before the popularly accepted, but erroneous, Relate of gunpowder discovery, General Joseph Wheeler, U.S.A., in a lecture a short time ago, before the Franklin Institute, remarked that in many localities in China and in India the soil is impregnated with nitre, and the probable discovery of gunpowder there, many centuries before the Christian era, may be explained in this way ; All cooking at that time was by wood fires, and the people lived in tents and huts with earth floors. Countless fires made of wood upon ground strongly impregnated with nitre must have existed every day, and when such fires were extinguished a portion of the wood must have been converted into charcoal, some of which would of necessity, become mixed with the nitre in the soil. By this means two of the moat active ingredients of powder were brought together, and it is very natural that when another fire was kindled on the same spot a flash might follow. This would load to investigation and then the manufacture of gunpowder was conceived. Whether this be true or not there is abundant evidence that the origin of gunpowder and artillery goes far back in the dim ages of the past. "Ine Hindoo code, compiled long before the Christian era, prohibited the making of war with cannon and guns or any kind of firearms. Quintus Curtins informs us that Alexander the Great' met with firearms in Asia, and Philostsatus says that Alexander's conquests were arrested by the use*of gunpowder. It is also written that those wise men who lived in the cities of the Gangpe "overthrew their enemies with tempests and thunderbolts shot from the walls.” Julius Africanus mentions shooting, powder in the year 275. It was used in the seige of Constantinople in 668 ; by the Arabs in 690 ; at Thessalonica in 904 ; at the seige of Belgrade, 1073 ; by the Greeks in naval battles in 1098 ; by the Arabs against the Iberians in 1147, and at Toulouse in 1218. It appeal's to have been generally known throughout civilised Europe as early as 1300 and soon thereafter it made its way into England, where it was manufactured during the seign of Elizabeth, and we learn that a few arms were possessed by ' the English in 1310, and that they were used at the battle of Crecy in 1346.—"Cossier’s Magazine.”