86 E. Maclagan— On Early Asiatic Mre Weapons. m i 



fire Pdo of the Tartars, the Chinese (A. D. 1273) constructed defensive 

 covering for their horses of rice straw ropes covered with clay.* 



It is when Greek Fire comes to he employed that the noise is specially 

 noticed ; which has given occasion to the surmise that it was in reality 

 gunpowder. A French writer who has made researches on the subject 

 (M. Lalanne), endeavours to show that it was nothing else than gunpowder 

 used as such, and that the tubes from which it was sometimes discharged' 

 were cannon. But it may be observed that the noise mentioned in connec- 

 tion with Greek Fire was the noise accompanying the flight and combustion 

 or explosion of the burning missile itself, as it came among the people 

 against whom it was launched. Noises of a kind that would be alarming 

 to those unused to this instrument of warfare, may accompany the combus- 

 tion of naphtha or petroleum, which appears generally to have been the 

 chief ingredient of this fire composition. And any noise would contribute 

 to the terror occasioned by encountering a hostile fire so formidable on other 

 accounts, and would be magnified by the apprehensions of those exposed to 

 it. And their accounts of it constantly exhibit the perturbation it caused. 



They come not, — while his fierce beleaguerers pour 



Engines of havoc in, unknown before 



And horrible as new ; javelins that fly 



Enwreath'd with smoky flames through the dark sky, 



And red hot globes that, opening as they mount, 



Discharge, as from a kindled naphtha fount, 



Showers of consuming fire o'er all below.f 

 The most graphic accounts of the Greek Fire, " horrible as new," and 

 of the wonder and alarm which it created, are given in the pleasant pages 



thrown by the enemy is to be put out with vinegar. He goes on to mention (ch. 35) 

 a certain vdp i<rxvp6u, which he says can by no means be extinguished ; and Ca- 

 saubon, in his comment, thinks from the terms used that though certain materials are 

 named (pitch, sulphur, &c), something more is possibly intended, of the nature of 

 Greek Fire. (Isaaci Casauboni in JEneam Notce, 587.) 



* Eeinaud and Fave, Feu Gregeois, p. 196. Yule's Marco Polo, 2nd Ed., II, 154. 

 ^ f Lalla Uoolch. The Veiled Prophet. Moore's note, along with other references, 

 notices Gibbon's account of the Greek Fire—" It was either launched in red-hot balls of 

 stone and iron, or darted in arrows or javelins twisted round with flax and tow which 

 had deeply imbibed the inflammable oil." Fire missiles of the same general character, 

 and formidable quite as much on account of their novelty to those against whom they 

 were used as on account of their real power or destructiveness, were in use long before 

 anything ^ of the kind bore the name of Greek Fire. " The Bhodians had engines on 

 board their ships, by means of which they threw fire upon those of the enemy. This 

 probably resembled the substance which in later times was called Grecian fire : to judge 

 of it from the manner in which the Greek historians speak of it, it was not thrown with 

 rockets, and was certainly something inextinguishable and not generaUy known." 

 (Niebuhr's Lectures on the History of Home, by Schmidt, II, 184 .) 



