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Updated: April 30, 2025
There was no answering shot, and he leaped forward, charging directly toward the tree that concealed the hidden foe before the man could reload; for by the roar of its discharge, MacNair knew that the weapon was an old Hudson Bay muzzle-loading smoothbore a primitive weapon of the old North, but in the hands of an Indian, a weapon of terrible execution at short range, where a roughly moulded bullet or a slug rudely hammered from the solder melted from old tin cans tears its way through the flesh, driven by three fingers of black powder.
I took the smoothbore because it shot a bullet very well; and my experience has been that a round ball from a smoothbore is quite as effective against a lion as an express bullet. The lion is soft, and not a difficult animal to finish if you hit him anywhere in the body. A buck takes far more killing.
I induced Patricia to remain in camp with the Indians while I went out and shot a bear. The bear was very fat and I gave all the meat to the natives, for which they were grateful. One of them had a smoothbore, but no powder. I could spare him none. Patricia was now convinced the Indians would not harm us, but she would not consent to making camp near them.
Fort Gaines, on Dauphin Island, had a garrison of 864 men and mounted three 10-inch columbiads, four 32-pounder rifled guns and twenty smoothbore guns of 32, 24 and 18-pound calibres. The principal pass to Mississippi Sound was commanded by Fort Powell, with one mounted 10-inch gun, one 8-inch columbiad and four rifled guns.
Over his saddle lay a "kaross," or robe of leopard-skins, and upon his shoulder he carried his "roer" a large smoothbore gun, about six feet in length, with an old-fashioned flint-lock, quite a load of itself.
He took down from its pegs an awkward, smoothbore rifle and carefully examined the enormous percussion cap that was fitted over the nipple. Mistrusting the cap, he removed it and replaced it with a new one. He scrutinized the gun keenly, as if he could judge in this manner of the condition of the load. All his movements were deliberate and deadly.
Weasel to advance so large a sum as was required, without security; and he did communicate with Mr. Smoothbore as soon as he had satisfied himself upon that score. He assures me Mr. Balais is quite as clever a counsel. Indeed, I should not have told you of the change, had you not pressed the question so directly." "Tell me all, mother; tell me every thing; I adjure you to keep nothing back.
Accordingly after breakfast, having rubbed some oil upon my leg, which was very sore from the cub's tongue, I took the driver, Tom, who did not half like the business, and having armed myself with an ordinary double No. 12 smoothbore, the first breechloader I ever had, I started.
He had also four small field guns of obsolete pattern, to which were added later on a home-made howitzer and an ancient man-of-war's smoothbore, which had left the foundry during the Napoleonic wars.
Unless the grooves he tolerably deep, they will not hold the ball when a heavy charge is behind it; it quits the grooves, strips its belt, and flies out as though fired from a smoothbore. A large-bore rifle is a useless incumbrance, unless it is so constructed that it will bear a proportionate charge of powder, and shoot as accurately with its proof charge as with a single drachm.
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