Dr. Cuihush on the Greek Fire. 31 1 



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 fiie, the^eM gregeois, as it is styled by 

 the more early of the French writers. " It came flying 

 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. 55r8, 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 S2d 

 year of the Hegira, (A. D. 672) Constantinople was beseig- 

 ed in the reign of Constantine Prognatus, 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 o{ wild fire, which would burn un- 

 der water, and by this means destroyed the whole fleet. 

 The fact that the incendiary preparation of Callinicus was 

 extremely destructive, and spread dismay amona; the ene- 

 my, is therefore warranted by the historical accounts we 

 have mentioned. 



Pinkerton in his Petrology, 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 



