Immense demand for them--Their value--Best manufacturers--Colonel Colt’s repeating pistol described--Its double action discussed-- Machine-made pistols not equal to hand-made--Dean and Adams’s revolver described--Its improvements on Colt’s--Tranter’s double trigger revolver--His lubricating bullet and other improvements--Webley’s revolver--Comparison of self-acting and cocking-lock pistols-- Tendency of revolvers to foul--Lieut. Symons’s opinion--Other defects to be overcome--Author’s preference for double-barrelled fire-arms in warfare 413
The name explained, and weapon described--Its origin--Author’s share in its construction--American machinery for gun-making--Extent and products of the Enfield manufactory 429
CHAPTER XII.--THE HARPOON-GUN FOR WHALE-SHOOTING. 432
CHAPTER XIII.--SHOT, CAPS, AND WADDING. 435
From the earliest ages of the world, the jealousies and bickerings of mankind have been fruitful causes of war. Sometimes, perhaps, justified by political reasons; at others, it may be, arising solely from a desire, on the part of ambitious chiefs, to extend their territories by multiplying their conquests; while, in too many cases, the struggle for religious ascendancy has led to the most sanguinary and cruel battles.
War has been considered as a science from the most remote ages, and the ingenuity of the talented has successively been taxed to render it as perfect as possible. It is true--
“Man’s earliest arms were fingers, teeth, and nails, And stones and fragments from the branching woods;”
but these soon gave place to others, more calculated to decide unequal, and often protracted, conflicts.
Arms, in a general sense, include all kinds of weapons, both offensive and defensive; and amongst the earliest may be classed the bow and arrow, as it gave facilities to man to capture the wild animals for food, probably before their use was required for the purposes of war. The bow and the sling were the first means invented, and next only to the human arm for projecting bodies with an offensive aim: the great principle which, to the present day, reigns unrivalled, developing the ruling passion of man to injure, while remaining himself in comparative safety,--“self-preservation” being “the first law of nature.”