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Had we depended upon muzzle-loading muskets, the party would have been quickly destroyed; the sharp fire of the sniders at close quarters must have caused immense loss at the first onset. I now determined to lighten the loads considerably. It was difficult to carry the angarebs, as the leas caught in the high grass.

The boatswains piped the call, "all hands clear ship for action"; the fife and drum beat to quarters; and four hundred men stood by the tackles of the muzzle-loading guns with their clumsy wooden carriages, or climbed into the tops to use their muskets or trim sail. Decks were sanded to prevent slipping when blood flowed.

As evening approached, we turned to the right from the plank-road, and halted in a corn-field, not far from the river. As we were about to break ranks we heard on our right the clatter and snapping of gun-caps, which, in a regiment armed with muzzle-loading guns, usually follows the command to prepare to load.

"It was clean," repeated Paige. "I understand that it was a double-barreled, muzzle-loading shotgun. Were there any rags about?" "Yes." "Where were they?" "One was in the ashes of the fireplace." "Look as if some one had tried to hide it?" "Yes" reluctantly. "If it was that sort of gun, there must have been a shot-pouch and powder-flask. Where were they?" "In the drawer where Jim keeps them."

They were the pioneers of the pioneers, who in their wanderings found a spot rich in game, in nuts and soil such a home as they had wished and they beckoned back for their families and their friends. The figure upon the rock-ledge rested upon a long, muzzle-loading, flint-lock rifle as he looked out over the valley. His legs were wrapped in crudely tanned hides made from game he had killed.

You must resign yourself to a sacrifice! I send for the chief, and offer him as my ransom a cask containing fifty bottles of rum, ten muzzle-loading guns, and two complete uniforms of an English general. This offer tempts him; but as I ask him first of all to have me safe conducted to the King of Nubia, he answers that if once I got there I should send him about his business.

We had not realized that the modern battle-ship had become such a complicated piece of mechanism that the old methods of training in marksmanship were as obsolete as the old muzzle-loading broadside guns themselves. Almost the only man in the navy who fully realized this was our naval attache at Paris, Lieutenant Sims.

Piles of caribou bones that had been cracked to extract the marrow, many pairs of antlers, the bare poles of large lodges and extensive arrangements, such as racks and cross poles for dressing and curing deerskins. In a cache we found two muzzle-loading guns, cooking utensils, steel traps, and other camping and hunting paraphernalia.

All through the settlement the Post Indians and half-breeds set about their tasks. Some aided Sarnier with his calking of the bateaux; some worked in the fields; some mended or constructed in the different shops. At eight o'clock the bell rang again, and they ate breakfast. Then a group of seven, armed with muzzle-loading "trade-guns" bound in brass, set out for the marshes in hopes of geese.

Still the horsemen each armed with the muzzle-loading, single-barrelled, flint-lock gun of the period advanced cautiously, until so near that the animals began to look up as if in surprise at the unwonted intrusion on their great solitudes.