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The priests, bravest of the brave, journeyed unarmed and far, even among the scornful Iroquois, enduring torture by fire and knife, the torment of mosquitoes, cold and famine, and draughty, crowded bark houses smotheringly thick with damp wood smoke. They were well supplied with match-lock guns obtained by the Mohawks from the Dutch of the Hudson River.
Even then Western supremacy was gradual and only recently completed by the exploitation of petroleum, rubber and high explosives. Brown Bess, as a shooting weapon, was far inferior to the long-barrelled flint-lock of Morocco, and the Arabian match-lock could out-range any firearm in existence till sharp cutting tools made the rifle possible.
I had seen the equipment of the infantry. One-third of it was an old muzzle-loading fowling-piece, with a ragged rust-hole where the nipples should have been, one-third a wire-bound match-lock with a worm-eaten stock, and one-third a four-bore flint duck-gun without a flint.
Hutton would imply that the first muskets manufactured in England were made in Birmingham. It seems more likely, that the connexion with William III. arose from the desire of that monarch to have the flint-lock, which was superseding the match-lock on the Continent, made in his own dominions.
The match-lock and the field-piece in their rudest form triumphed over the shield, the spear, and the javelin, while the long-bow, once so formidable, is now rarely drawn, except by those who cater for sensation-journals.
Yet, indeed and indeed, as all may see, there was no cause for all this fret. For I cared no more about Christian's Elsa than about Christian himself less, indeed, for Christian was a good soldier and master-at-arms, and taught me how to handle the match-lock, the pistolet, and the other new weapons that had begun to come in from France.
I could hit the barn-door now capitally well with the Spanish match-lock, and even with John Fry's blunderbuss, at ten good land-yards distance, without any rest for my fusil.
I could hit the barn-door now capitally well with the Spanish match-lock, and even with John Fry's blunderbuss, at ten good land-yards distance, without any rest for my fusil.
The Indians of King Philip's War brought out their "snap-hances," or flint-locks, and the colonists were not slow to see the improvement. Experimentally at first, and afterward by a law of Massachusetts, the old pikes and heavy match-lock rifles were replaced with lighter muskets bearing the flint. The soldier ceased to be a slave to his weapon.
"There will be a hundred thousand of these infidels at Mandhatta, and when they see fifty Pindaris, tulwar and spear and match-lock, there will be unrest; perhaps there will be altercation they will fear that we ride in pillage." "I was thinking of that," Barlow replied; "and it would be as well that you turned your faces homeward."
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