Moreover, it was only with great difficulty that the frontiersman transported any weighty articles on his Western pilgrimage. Lead was heavy, powder was precious, the paths back to the land of such commodities long and arduous. A marvel of adaptation, the American rifle swiftly grew to a practical perfection. Never in the history of the arms of nations has there been produced a weapon whose results have been more tremendous in comparison to the visible expenditure of energy; never has there been a more economical engine, or an environment where economy was more imperative.
The ball of the American rifle was small, forty, sixty or perhaps one hundred of them weighing scarcely more than a pound. The little, curving horn, filled with the precious powder grains, carried enough to furnish many shots. The stock of the rifle itself gave housing to the little squares of linen or fine leather with which the bullet was patched in loading. With this tiny store of powder and lead, easily portable food for this providentially contrived weapon, the American frontiersman passed on silently through the forest, a master, an arbiter, ruler of savage beast or savage foeman, and in time master of the civilized antagonist that said him nay.
We shall observe that the state of Pennsylvania was the starting point of the westward movement of our frontiersmen. We shall find also that the first American small-bore, muzzle-loading rifles were made in Pennsylvania. The principle of the rifle, the twist in the bore, is thought to have originated in the German states of the Palatinate, but it was left for America to improve it and to perfect its use.
At Lancaster, Pennsylvania, there was a riflemaker, probably a German by birth, by name Decherd or Dechert, who began to outline the type of the American squirrel-rifle or hunting-arm. This man had an apprentice, one Mills, with ideas of his own. We see this apprentice and his improved rifle presently in North Carolina; and soon thereafter riflemakers spring up all over the east slope of the Alleghanies, so that as though by magic all our hunters and frontiersmen are equipped with this long rifle, shooting the tiny ball, and shooting it with an accuracy hitherto deemed impossible in the achievements of firearms.