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For artillery, the top of the Tower was mounted with some antiquated wall-pieces, and small cannons, which bore the old-fashioned names of culverins, sakers, demi-sakers, falcons, and falconets.
The old soldier and the Puritan instantly plunged into a deep and learned disquisition upon the merits of wall-pieces, drakes, demi-culverins, sakers, minions, mortar-pieces, falcons, and pattereroes, concerning all which pieces of ordnance Saxon had strong opinions to offer, fortified by many personal hazards and experiences.
They possess sixty stand of muskets, beside blunderbusses and wall-pieces. They had quitted the Company's districts about twenty-three days ago, and are gone, some to Koto Tuggoh, and others to Pakalang-jambu. 27th. Marched in a north-north-east direction; passed over a steep hill which took us three hours hard walking.
And so, contrary to my wont, I went forth with them, even to the field, where there was valiant fighting on both sides. Nevertheless, the malignants shooting their wall-pieces at us, had so much the advantage, that, after bursting their gates with a salvo of our cannon, Colonel Harrison ordered his men to advance on the causeway, and try to carry the place by storm.
He had been a butt all his life; bullied at school, at Addiscombe, and in his corps worst of all. "They were attacking a hill-fort, and the fire from wall-pieces and matchlocks was so heavy that the storming-party would not face it. Among those who retreated were two of his superior officers and chief tormentors.
Their principal trade is with Herat, and consists of woollen and camel-hair fabrics and clarified butter. The farming population all live in small hamlets. The better classes of these live in villages surrounding or joined to the castle of a Khan. These castles are encompassed by a rude wall, having frequently turrets at the corners, and occasionally armed with swivel-guns or wall-pieces.
Now this band is, of course, if the soffit-pieces project a little beyond the face of the wall-pieces, a mere fillet, like the wooden gunwale in Plate IX.; and the question is, how to enrich it most wisely.
They allowed the French and Indians to approach within pistol-shot without firing a gun, but at just the right moment they discharged their wall-pieces and blunderbusses, followed by a destructive fire from their muskets, so that the havoc and confusion were great. Completely routed, the enemy made for the shore and retreated without delay to Ticonderoga.
They retreated northward, in the direction of their stronghold, by the Narrows of Lake Champlain, and in order to head them off, if possible, Rogers and Putnam were ordered by their commander to take one hundred Rangers, with "two wall-pieces and two blunderbusses," and proceed by boat down Lake George to a point opposite a certain part of the Narrows, where they were to cross overland and try to intercept the enemy.
Besides the common weapons of the peasants there was a puncheon half full of pistols and petronels, together with a good number of muskets, screw-guns, snaphances, birding-pieces, and carbines, with a dozen bell-mouthed brass blunderbusses, and a few old-fashioned wall-pieces, such as sakers and culverins taken from the manor-houses of the county.
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