ANCIENT AND MIDDLE AGE SHOOTING 15 



not a "mighty hunter," and "no sportsman," as the story of 

 the one ewe lamb proved. 



It is a long jump from Nimrod to the hunting in the New 

 Forest, which was obviously as much shooting as hunting, when 

 Rufus was killed by an arrow, meant, or not meant, for a 

 hart. Whether there ever were outlaws named Robin Hood 

 and Little John does not matter, because fiction is always based 

 on fact, or it does not live a day. The fiction or fact of the 

 great shooting of the king's deer by these outlaws has lived 

 seven hundred years, and it is more easy to believe that there 

 were many generations of such poachers and highwaymen than 

 that there were none at all. The highest office in the land 

 was then one of robbery, and it is a poor king who has not 

 some subjects who will offer him the sincerest form of flattery, 

 namely imitation. 



Gunpowder is said to have been invented in China many 

 years before it was re-invented in Europe. We are apt to 

 marvel that no explosive was made use of before, but learning 

 was very much in the hands of the priests at a time when the 

 latter class was especially sincere, and when the people were 

 full of superstition or belief. It may be, then, that the 

 first discoverers of gunpowder for conscience' sake made no 

 use of what must have appeared to be an invention of the 

 Devil. Such inventors, if there were any, might have been the 

 more disposed to this course because the stuff was clearly as 

 destructive to its users as to an enemy, until the building of 

 guns had progressed for many years. 



It is not quite certain in which battle was first employed 

 gunpowder a fact which indicates that it did not do much 

 for its side. It appears to have been the guns that were weak, 

 not so much the powder, which was probably very much the 

 same when used by Henry VIII. as black powder is to-day. 



It is, moreover, not certain that guns were any better at 

 Waterloo than they had been in the time of Elizabeth. The 

 reason for this was the want of good metal. It is a known fact 

 that thickness of metal becomes useless after a certain point is 

 reached, so that iron and brass guns could not be made to take 



