Dr. Cutbush on the Greek Fire. 31t 
greatest of the Constantines, with a sacred injunction not to 
divulge it under any pretext, &c. He also remarks, that af- 
ter it was kept secret above four hundred years, and to the 
end of the 11th century, it was stolen by the Mahometans, 
who employed it against the crusaders. A knight it ap- 
pears, who despised the swords and lances of the Sara- 
cens, relates, with heartfelt sincerity his own fears, at the 
sight and sound of the mischievous engine that discharged a 
torrent of the Greek fire, the feu gregeois, as it is styled by 
the more early of the French writers. ‘It came flyin 
through the air,”’ says Gibbon, quoting Joinville, (Historie de 
St. Louis,) “like a winged long-tailed dragon, about the 
thickness of a hogshead, with a report of thunder, and the 
velocity of lightning; and the darkness of the night was dis- 
pelled by this deadly illumination. The use of the Greek, 
or as it might now be called the Saracen fire, was continued 
to the middle of the fourteenth century, when the scientific 
or casual compound of nitre, sulphur and charcoal, effected 
a new revolution in the art of war, and the history of man- 
kind.” 
Dr. Ramsey, our learned historian, (Universal History, 
vol, ii. p. 150,) gives a similar account; and Morse, in his 
Universal Geography, p. 5598, after speaking of the Naptha 
springs of Persia, remarks that, when it is scattered on the 
sea and inflamed, the flame is often wafted to a great dis- 
tance. 
Thevenot (Travels in the Levant) tells us, that in the 52d 
year of the Hegira, (A. D. 672) Constantinople was beseig- 
ed in the reign of Constantine ag as by Yesid, the son 
of Moauir, the first caliph of the family of the Ommiades, 
when the Greek emperor found himself so pressed, that he 
was almost reduced to despair. But the famous engineer 
Callinicus invented a kind of wild fire, which would burn un- 
der water, an this means destroyed the whole fleet. 
The fact that the incendiary preparation of Callinicus was 
extremely destructive, and spread dismay among the ene- 
my, is therefore warranted by the historical accounts we 
have mentioned. 
inkerton in his Petralogy, vol. ii. p. 148, speaking of 
the Naptha of Baku, which exists on the western side of the 
Caspian sea, concludes that this substance was brought to 
Constantinople, where it formed the chief ingredient of the 
