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Updated: May 23, 2025
Modern firearms are rarely seen in the bazaars, except cheap German and French muzzle-loaders, more dangerous to the shooter than to the object aimed at.
Men used to breech-loaders can scarce understand the slow operations of muzzle-loaders. He had only got the powder in, and was plucking a bullet from his pouch. Another moment and he would have been down, when crack! crack! went shots on either side of him, and the bear fell with a ball from Victor in its heart and another from Rollin in its spine.
But the music and the acclamations were drowned by a deafening crash, as if the island had suddenly burst into a thousand pieces, dragging the city to the depths of the Abyss. The square was shooting a fusillade of lightning flashes, a veritable cannonade. Those ancient arms, blunderbusses, muzzle-loaders, pistols, crammed full of powder, could roar like artillery.
He turned the pistol over, and noticed a small inner circle in the flat steel. It was a small hinged lid, which hid a pocket in the handle. He raised the little lid with his finger-nail, and a shower of percussion caps fell on the bagatelle table. This contrivance for holding caps was not new to Colwyn. He had seen it in other old-fashioned muzzle-loaders.
All were muzzle-loaders, as they had no facilities for making breech-loaders, so that it would be impossible to fire rapidly, after the first ten shots; but they counted on being able to hold out against a pretty strong force of savages, armed as they were. The wagon went forward slowly, and was kept as much as possible within the sheltering range of the underbrush.
Select one of our very best regiments and stop their pay for several months, deprive them of officers, take away all doctors and medical comforts, half starve them, arm them with flags, pikes and muzzle-loaders, and then march them against a crack European regiment. You may be sure the Chinese example would be quickly followed.
The increasing din and the more confident yelps told the men, who, living in the forest, had become familiar with the various sounds and calls of the wild beasts, that reinforcements were coming in, and that the attack would soon be made. The camp could muster ten guns. Six of these were doubled-barrelled, but they were all muzzle-loaders.
This incident may deserve a place in the palæontology of gun-making. There are now, I presume, no muzzle-loaders left; unless in museums, as specimens. Very shortly after the Macedonian's return home I was sent to New Orleans, for a ship on the Texas blockade; transportation being given me on one of the "beef-boats," as the supply-vessels were familiarly known.
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