Guns and Gold; Faith and Food : 163 



guns, they either did not have or did not employ adequate small 

 arms. 



When Magellan, sailing around the world, reached the Philippines 

 his ships were provided with cannon but the account shows very 

 clearly that during the battle which he fought at Mactan, the water 

 near shore was shallow and the vessels had to stay so far offshore 

 that the beach where Magellan was trying to effect a landing was 

 beyond range of his guns. Magellan, fighting in armor along the 

 beach, was showered with native arrows that were no more than 

 reeds with wooden points hardened in fire. One of these entered an 

 opening in his helmet and wounded his eye. Native arrows and lances 

 were fired at his legs and he went down in shallow water overwhelmed 

 by a native onslaught. 



As late as the end of the eighteenth century Captain Cook lost his 

 life to native warriors on a beach in the Hawaiian Islands under much 

 the same circumstances, apparently again because he was out of the 

 protective range of his ships and had gone ashore in a small boat that 

 was inadequately armed. 



The first European firearms were relatively large guns and can- 

 nons that could be used in the siege or defense of forts and walled 

 towns and against bodies of massed troops. 



The development of small arms came after that of the large pieces. 

 Apparently the first of the portable personal arms was patterned after 

 the earlier and larger models of explosive weapons — it was called a 

 hand cannon. The men who used it must have had great strength 

 and great courage. It was heavy and unwieldy, had a large bore and 

 fired a large bullet feebly. It required two hands for its management; 

 one hand was devoted to holding and aiming the weapon and the 

 other to lighting the charge of powder. 



However, with this as a start, lighter weapons were soon devel- 

 oped. Even the lighter weapons still required two hands and the full 

 attention of the marksman because one hand was required to man- 

 age the "match" which was used to ignite the charge of powder. The 

 match was simply a length of braided cord, dipped in sulphur, which 

 burned slowly and once lit was serviceable for a considerable period 

 of time. These early single shot weapons were called pistols possibly 

 because they were first developed in the city of Pistoia in Italy. 



By 1425, that is in the time of Henry the Navigator, the matchlock 

 pistol began to appear. In this weapon, the match was incorporated 

 in the weapon itself. The match was in a clamp attached to a trigger 



