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In all probability, she was disturbed by the distant reports of fire-arms, and it was a rare instance of innate good-breeding that she did not alarm her guest by calling attention to them. Iris, amid such novel surroundings, could not distinguish one noise from another.
This detonation of fire-arms, the first perhaps which has resounded in this corner of the earth since the creation of the world, as it is prolonged from echo to echo, even to the highest mountains, awakens in every part of the island as it were a groan of distress. Instinct, that sublime prescience, has revealed to all that a great peril has just been born.
Too much accustomed, in the new settlement in which she had been mostly reared, to the sight and even handling of fire-arms not to know how to use them, she cocked the piece, and, again advancing to the edge of her platform, pointed down into the thickest of the infuriated pack, and fired.
He waited upon Claverhouse as speedily as he could, found his own horse saddled for his use, and Cuddie in attendance. Both were deprived of their fire-arms, though they seemed, otherwise, rather to make part of the troop than of the prisoners; and Morton was permitted to retain his sword, the wearing which was, in those days, the distinguishing mark of a gentleman.
As they were profoundly ignorant of the use of fire-arms, and we wished to impress upon them the irresistible power of the white man, it was agreed that we should ask them to guide us to the nearest place frequented by kangaroos, and pick off two or three of these animals in their presence, if possible.
The night was dark and dreary, and our first entrance was into a kitchen, such as my imagination had pictured the subterraneous one of the robbers in Gil Blas. Here we underwent the ceremony of having our pocket-books searched for papers and letters, and our trunks rummaged for knives and fire-arms.
He has the honor of being the inaugurator of the system of progressive improvement in fire-arms, which has gone on steadily and without flagging for now fully sixty years past. Some time before abandoning the manufacture of the cotton gin, Mr. Whitney established an arms factory in New Haven, and obtained a contract from the Government for ten thousand stand of arms, to be delivered in two years.
With fire-arms the people were acquainted already. The "brass galloper," though viewed with "wonderful respect," was still only an engine on a larger scale than those to which they were familiarized. But the rocket was a formidable and splendid novelty.
We soon ran the raft aground, and, leaping on shore, were led by Cousin Silas to the summit of a rocky hill close to where we were. The savages advanced with threatening gestures. None of them had fire-arms. We thus felt sure that, if they ventured to attack us, we should make a good fight of it.
Loud vows of vengeance were uttered against my head, and threats of instant pursuit by a large party on horseback, should I dare to go into or beyond their country; and as these were coupled with the declaration that the English government had given over the whole of the native tribes to their rule, and would assist in their entire subjection by preventing fire-arms and ammunition from entering the country, except for the use of the Boers, it was not to be wondered at that I was detained for months at Kuruman from sheer inability to get wagon-drivers.
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