CHAPTER XXVIII. 



DISCOVERY AND INTRODUCTIOX OF GUNPOWDER. 



OME writers assert that the use of gun- 

 powder, as well as ordnance, was well 

 known to certain of the ancients as far 

 back as the year of our Lord eighty- 

 five; and in support of this hypothesis 

 the following remarks of Uffano, on the 

 ^ authority of Robert Norton, the author 

 of a work entitled The Crunner, printed 

 in London in 1664, are often quoted, viz.: — "That the invention 

 and use, as well of ordnance as of gunpowder, was in the eighty- 

 fifth yeare of our Lord made known and practised in the great and 

 ingenious kingdom of China ; and that in the maretyme provinces 

 thereof there yet remain certaine pieces of ordnance, both of iron 



and brasse, with the memory of their yeares of founding engraved 



429 



