330 Mr. Mallet on the Physical Conditions 



To return to the period of the text to which this prolonged Note refers. 



At periods anterior to the casting of bronze guns in Europe, cannon of enormous 

 magnitude appear to have been cast in India, by the Arabs and Turks. Colonel Symes 

 mentions a gun at Arracan, captured from the Burmese, 30 feet in length, 10 inches caliber, 

 and 2ifeet across the muzzle, which bore the appearance of great antiquity. The Indian 

 guns, however, of which I have ascertained the dates, are of a later period. 



The great bombard mentioned in the text (and by Gibbon, "Decline and Fall," vol. xii., 

 p. 197), as cast for the siege of Constantinople by the Turks, is stated elsewhere to have 

 thrown a stone shot of 600 lbs. weight. This would agree better with 11 palms circum- 

 ference of the shot, than 11 palms caliber, as stated by Gibbon and others, and coincide 

 pretty well with the guns brought by Mustapha against Malta, of 200 to 300 lbs., and with 

 those now at the Castles of the Dardanelles, which are probably of a not much later epoch. 

 Of these Bishop Pocooke, in his " Travels in the East," gives the following account : — 



" Guns at the Natoli Eski Hirsar Fourteen guns of brass, without carriages, loaded 



with stone balls; eight others towards the south; two very fine ones amongst them, one 

 25 feet long, adorned with JJeurs de lis, which they say was a distinction used by the 

 Emperors of the East before the French took these arms, and I have seen them in many 

 parts." 



Is it not more likely that these guns were captured from some of the orders of Christian 

 knighthood at Malta or Rhodes ? 



" The other is 20 feet long, in two parts, after the old way of working cannon of iron in 

 several pieces. The bore of this is 2 feet, so that a man may sit in it; 2-1 quintals of powder 

 are required to load it, and it carries a ball of 14 quintals." 



This would be about the weight of 2000 or 2500 lbs. for a stone shot of that diameter. 



" At the new Castle in Asia, near the mouth of the Scaraander, are some very fine brass 

 cannon, the bores not less than 1 foot in diameter. There are twenty-one of them to the 

 south-west, and twenty-nine to the north, faces." 



These guns have also been described by Baron deTott; but the most interesting account 

 of them that I have met with is that of Baron von Moltke, major in the Prussian service, 

 in his work " The Russian Campaigns in Bulgaria andRumelia in 1828-20," p. 528. 



" The batteries on the Dardanelles, contain one hundred and eight 44-pounders, nineteen 

 60-pounders, thirty 121-pounders throwing iron balls, besides 63 kemerlicks or guns 

 which throw stone balls, some of which are 1570 lbs. weight. These gigantic guns are 

 some of them 28 inches in diameter, and a man may creep into them up to the breech ; 

 they lie on the ground on sleepers of oak, instead of gun-carriages, with their butts against 

 strong walls, so as to prevent the recoil, as it would be impossible to run them forward again 

 in action. Some of them are loaded with as much as 1 cwt. of powder. 



" Baron de Tott gives a somewhat high-flown description of the ' earthquakes' produced 



