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Updated: May 10, 2025
The ingenuity of thousands of our most skilful men is now turned in this direction, and stimulated by a demand which will obviously insure a fortune to the successful competitor. The advantages of a breech-loading gun consist in the greater rapidity with which it can be loaded and fired, and the avoidance of the exposure incident to the motions of drawing the ramrod and ramming the cartridge.
An' rice, an' hominy, an' bags o' flour. Why, the North has been sendin' whole train loads of things down here for us to eat!" "And she has been sending more than that," said Harry. "Here are five or six hundred fine breech-loading rifles, and hundreds of thousands of cartridges. She's been sending us arms and ammunition with which to fight her!" His boyish spirit burst forth.
The Michigan Southern was opened, and the first train from the East had entered Chicago. A train had started west from St. Louis on the first five miles of the Pacific railroad. Telegraph lines stuck forth everywhere into the great spaces of the country, like the new shoots of a tree. The breech-loading gun had been invented. The fire-alarm telegram system had come into use.
Two well armed persons were thought a sufficient guard for each of the eight or ten nights that we remained in that vicinity. One night a young man of our party and I were appointed to watch. He most thoroughly equipped himself with several varieties of weapons, resolved to be prepared for any emergency. I trusted to a quick-firing breech-loading rifle.
Lying in their covert, Whitley's men reloaded their breech-loading rifles and again sent in a deadly fire. The main Northern force redoubled its efforts at the same time. The men in blue sent in swarms of whistling bullets and Dick saw the front line of the South retreating.
I attended a banquet given him there on October 26th. I then went from Raith to Brougham and Appleby, High Legh, and Teddesley, shooting at all these places, and at Crewe likewise, where I began to shoot with a new breech-loading gun. I must have shot thirty-five or forty days this year, and paid a great number of visits in country houses. We did not go abroad.
The pursuing party gathered all possible information en route as to the rate of speed at which the Indians were traveling, their numbers, etc., and from the citizens and the camp sites passed, learned that there were still over 400 of the warriors, and about 150 squaws and children in the band; that the bucks were all armed with modern breech-loading rifles, many of which were repeaters; that they were amply supplied with ammunition, and had with them over 2,000 head of good horses.
They were both old style rifles of the breech-loading type, and given a chance Eli knew how to fix them so that it would require the assistance of a gunsmith to place them in serviceable condition again. Once Dubois went out and called to Stackpole, evidently desirous of conferring with his partner over something he did not wish the boy to overhear.
Perhaps the captain was a professional malcontent; for, looking at a Parrott rifled hundred-pounder gun which we carried on the quarter-deck, he said, interrogatively, "Not breech-loading?" "No," I answered, "breech-loading is not in favor with us at present." "And very right you are," he rejoined. I think they then still had the Armstrong breech-loading system.
Besides some old war hulks at the station, there were a couple of training-ships getting ready for a cruise, and it made one proud of his country to see the interest shown by our party in everything on board of them, patiently listening to the explanation of the breech-loading guns, diving down into the between-decks, crowded with the schoolboys, where it is impossible for a man to stand upright and difficult to avoid the stain of paint and tar, or swarming in the cabin, eager to know the mode of the officers' life at sea.
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