involved in the Construction of Artillery. 315 



it " certain that ordnance was known in the city of the Oxydraces in India, in Alex- 

 ander's time." Many circumstances, however, seem to point to the use of cannon in China 

 at a far earlier period than that of Alexander (B.C. 300) (" Etudes sur le passe et I'avenir 

 de I'Artillerie," par le Prince Louis Napoleon, t. i. — Colonel Chesney, " Observations on 

 the Past and Present State of Firearms," &c., vol. i.) 



For centuries the East and the West were separated as by an impassable gulf. Asia 

 knew nothing of Europe; Europe but touched the coasts and confines of the great Eastern 

 continents. The annual expeditions of Solomon, coasting the further Arabia, reached 

 probably at farthest but to the southern coasts of Persia or the mouths of the Indus. The 

 Indian trade of Rome, so slender that the paucity of supply made a pound of silk worth a 

 pound of gold there, was carried on through Egypt and the Red Sea, but seems to have 

 reached no further than the Malabar coast and to Ceylon, and to have mainly consisted in 

 silk, pearls, gems, spices, and gums (Gibbon, " Decline and Fall"). The invasion of 

 Alexander, the voyage of Nearchus, were bi;t exceptional cases ; and the unusual appear- 

 ance of strangers from the East, even at the commencement of our era, is indicated by the 

 account given of the worship of the Magi at Bethlehem. But with Christianity began the 

 great breaking up of ancient systems, and the vast military and social migrations and new 

 localizations of mankind. Through Egypt and Asia Minor some of the obscure and half 

 occult knowledge of alchemy, of magic, and "curious arts," which the severer science of 

 Greece, and the splendid power of imperial Rome, had despised, had at length travelled 

 westward ; yet not unopposed, for in A.D. 290, Diocletian burns, by edict, all the alche- 

 mistic books in Egypt. The invader's sword, however, was soon to dislocate everything; 

 from the meridians eastward of Scythia, as from a dividing line, Tartars and Moguls 

 poured into India ; the northern nations precipitated themselves upon the Roman Empire 

 and upon southern Europe ; ere long the conquering Arabs appear upon the disturbed 

 European scene ; and before the end of the seventh century their vast empire extends from 

 Bagdad to Granada and Morocco. Soldiers and nomads at first, they yet brought with 

 them some of the arts and science, the poetry and literature, the refined and luxurious 

 tastes, of the ancient East, which, under the firm dynasty of the Abbassides, received those 

 later developments which our own paper, sugar, and Arabic numerals attest. The fanatic 

 element of power is now added ; from the cloudy dust of the desert the whirlwind of 

 Mahomet's cavalry emerges, beneath which in later day the Eastern Empire is overthrown, 

 and which at last is only with difficulty stayed beneath the walls of Vienna. 



It may be asked, then, how is it that the warlike race of Islam, coming from the land 

 of this wondrous secret, which was known also to the learned amongst themselves, never 

 used it as a weapon of warfare until the eleventh century, when the Moors in Spain seem to 

 have applied gunpowder in sieges? (Sismondi, " Hist. Literat." by Roscoe, vol. i. cap. ii.) 

 The answer seems to be, they were mounted, a nation of cavalry ; the sword, pronounced 

 by Mahomet himself " the key of heaven and of hell," was their favourite and most e£Fec- 



