1?8 GUNPOWDER. 



The common story respecting the invention of gunpowder and 

 artillery is thus related : about the year 1320, one Bartholdus 

 Schwartz, a German Monk, and student in alchymy (a pursuit 

 then much in fashion), having in the course of his experiments 

 mixed saltpetre, sulphur, and charcoal in a mortar, and partly 

 covered it with a stone, it somehow took fire, and blew the stone 

 to a considerable distance t thus, by one accident, furnishing 

 the hints for making gunpowder, its force, and a piece of ord- 

 nance for using it ; and it is worthy of observation, that stones 

 are said to have been thrown from mortars long before point 

 blank shooting was attempted : possibly this story may be true ; 

 but it does not at all follow from thence, that gunpowder was 

 not before known^ the same discovery having been frequently 

 made by different persons engaged in the same study. 



Many modern writers carry the invention of gunpowder, and 

 even its application to artillery, back to very remote antiquity; 

 The ingenious translator of the Gentoo Laws, finds fire arms, 

 gunpowder, and cannon, mentioned in that code, supposed at 

 least coeval with Moses. " It will no doubt (says he) strike the 

 reader with wonder, to be informed of a prohibition of fire-arms, 

 discovered in records of such unfathomable antiquity ; and he 

 will probably from hence renew the suspicion which has long 

 been deemed absurd, that Alexander the Great did absolutely 

 meet with some weapons of that kind in India, as a passage in 

 Quintus Curtius seems to ascertain : gunpowder has been known 

 in China as well as Hindostan far beyond all periods of investi- 

 gation." There is also, says Mr. Grose, the following ancient 

 testimony to this point in Greys Gunnery, printed, A. D, 1731. 

 In the life of Appolonius Tyan&us, written by Philcstratus, fif- 

 teen hundred years ago, there is the following passage concerning 

 a people of India, called Oxydracce : u These truly wise men 

 dwelt between the rivers Hyphasis and Ganges; their country 

 Alexander the Great never entered, deterred not by fear of the 



