GATE 



2407 



GAUL 



do to Cornwallis what he had accomplished 

 against Burgoyne; in his own words, he was 

 bent upon "Burgoyning Cornwallis." He was 

 totally defeated by Cornwallis at Camden, how- 

 ever, his army was nearly annihilated, and in 

 December he was superseded by Greene. A 

 court of inquiry was appointed to inquire into 

 his military conduct, but after careful investi- 

 gation Greene concluded that Gates was not 

 to blame for the disaster, and advised against 

 holding the court. At the close of the war he 

 retired to his estate in Virginia, and in 1790 

 he removed to New York where he died. 



GATE. High above the plain on a hill in 

 the Palestine of Bible times and surrounded 

 by steep walls, stood Gath, one of the five 

 royal cities of the Philistines. It was a hard 

 place to capture and a very important fortress 

 to hold. Warring nations fought to obtain 

 possession of it and when David, Hazael and 

 Uzziah captured it, they destroyed much of 

 value within its gates. Gath was the home of 

 a strong race of men, among them Goliath, 

 who grew to manhood in this city and whom 

 David slew. At present a small village is all 

 that is left of the once famous city. In 

 David's lament for Saul and Jonathan (II Sam- 

 uel I, 20), he says, "Tell it not in Gath, publish 

 it not in the streets of Askelon," for he fears 

 that the daughters of the Philistines will re- 

 joice over the death of these two great men. 

 The expression, "Tell it not in Gath," is to-day 

 used to mean, "Keep it secret." 



GAT 'LING GUN, a quick-firing machine gun, 

 the original from which the most effective of 

 the smaller weapons used in modern warfare 

 have been evolved. It was invented by Rich- 

 ard Jordan Catling during the War of Seces- 

 sion in America, and was afterwards adopted 

 by all modern armies. The Gatling gun was 

 practically a revolving rifle with ten barrels 

 fired in turn. lit had a capacity of 350 shots 

 a minute, and was easily moved from place 

 to place. Although superseded by the Maxim 

 and other machine guns the Gatling gun pos- 

 sessed a few features that have not been 

 improved. See MACHINE GUN. 



Richard Jordan Gatling (1818-1903) was born 

 in North Carolina. He showed great me- 

 chanical skill as a child and later assisted his 

 father in perfecting a machine for sowing cot- 

 ton seed. He also invented a hemp-breaking 

 machine and a steam plow. The United States 

 Congress voted him the sum of $40,000 to 

 experiment in new methods of casting cannon. 

 His greatest invention was the Gatling gun. 



GAUGE, or GAGE, gaje, a mechanical ap- 

 pliance for registering the force of steam or 

 the depth of water in boilers. The steam 

 gauge consists of a metal box with a dial, 

 over which an indicator, or needle, moves. 

 Steam from the boiler enters a tube in which 

 is a flat piece of metal connected with the 

 needle by a rod and spring. The pressure of 

 steam acts on the needle, forcing it round the 

 dial face to indicate the pressure in pounds. 

 Exactly the same principle is found in the 

 ordinary spring scales used in grocery stores. 

 A water gauge consists of a vertical glass cyl- 

 inder connected with the boiler by metal tubes. 

 The height of the water in the cylinder indi- 

 cates the level of the water in the boiler. 



GAUL, gawl, an ancient country, in the main 

 identical with France, though larger than that 

 country at present. Every schoolboy who be- 

 gins the study of Latin becomes familiar with 

 the name, for Caesar's famous Commentaries 



GAUL, 



Boundaries at the time of the greatest extent of 

 the Roman Empire, about A. D. 115. 



opens with the oft-quoted sentence, "All Gaul 

 is divided into three parts." Caesar then goes 

 on to describe these three parts and the people 

 that dwell in them, who "differ among them- 

 selves in customs, in manners and in language" 

 the Belgae, the Aquitani and "those who in 

 their own language are called Celtae, in ours, 

 Galli." Caesar was not the first of the Ro- 

 mans to come in contact with the Gauls. Cen- 

 turies before, the Gauls, whose territory ex- 

 tended from the North Sea to the Alps, had 

 crossed that mountain barrier, swept down 



