"Muzzle-loading" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... ramrod from the pipes and attached the cleaning worm with its twist of tow, kept handy in belt pouch in muzzle-loading days. ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough
... which is all American. There we may find trace of the Elizabethan Age—idioms lost from English literature and American speech long ago. There we may see the American home life as it went on more than a hundred years ago. We may see hanging on the wall the long muzzle-loading rifle of an earlier day. We may see the spinning-wheel and the loom. The women still make in part the clothing for their families, and the men still make their own household furniture, their own farming implements, their ...
— The Passing of the Frontier - A Chronicle of the Old West, Volume 26 in The Chronicles - Of America Series • Emerson Hough
... These were the "Ferdinand Max" and the "Hapsburg." The "Kaiser Max," the "Prinz Eugen," and "Don Juan de Austria" were smaller ships of 3500 tons and 650 horse-power, but they had a slightly better armament, sixteen smooth-bore muzzle-loading 48-pounders, and fourteen rifled guns, light breech-loading 24-pounders. The "Salamander" and the "Drache" were ships of 3000 tons and 500 horse-power. They mounted sixteen rifled 24-pounders and ten smooth-bore 48-pounders. These five smaller ironclads were the ...
— Famous Sea Fights - From Salamis to Tsu-Shima • John Richard Hale
... through grass about eight feet high, and occasional forest. The rain now descended steadily, and I feared that the old muzzle-loading muskets ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... old-fashioned, muzzle-loading kind, and Aunt Cynthia gave what help she could to her nephew, as he began reloading it. From the powder flask she poured a charge down the barrel, upon which Tom pressed the conical bullet, wrapped about with a small ...
— Brave Tom - The Battle That Won • Edward S. Ellis
... muzzle-loading, Springfield muskets, small leather boxes for percussion caps, and larger ones for cartridges. For the information of the present generation let it be explained that the cartridge was made of tough paper containing powder in one end and the ounce ball of lead in the other; and the manner of loading ...
— Reminiscences of a Rebel • Wayland Fuller Dunaway
... repurchasing the corvette Abtao—a sister ship to the famous Alabama of American Civil War times—built in 1864, of 1050 tons displacement, 300 horse- power, and with a nominal sea-speed of 6 knots. This ship was armed with three 150-pounder muzzle-loading guns and three 30-pounder muzzle- loaders; and she played almost as important a part in the war between Chili and Peru as did the Alabama ...
— Under the Chilian Flag - A Tale of War between Chili and Peru • Harry Collingwood
... reputation as a man-killer in the days of the muzzle-loading rifle, when failure to stop him with one shot deprived the hunter of all advantage in respect of weapons and reversed their positions instantly, the bear becoming the hunter and the man the game. In early days, also the Grizzly had no fear ...
— Bears I Have Met—and Others • Allen Kelly
... teamsters from the valley towns, miners from the diggings, and a riffraff of adventurers from no one knew—or cared—where. It was a booted crowd with a goodly sprinkling of red shirts to give it color, and weapons in evidence on every side. Here walked one with a brace of long-barreled muzzle-loading pistols in his belt, and there another with the handle of a bowie-knife protruding from his boot-top; and every one of those frock-coated dealers at the tables had a Derringer or two stowed away on that portion of his person which he deemed most accessible. The bartender ...
— When the West Was Young • Frederick R. Bechdolt
... pinon nuts, and similar vegetable food, which in addition to rabbits formed their principal subsistence. At certain times they all went to the Kaibab deer-hunting. Their guns, where they had any, were of the old muzzle-loading type, with outside hammers to fire the caps. Many still used the bow-and-arrow, and some knew how to make stone arrow-heads. We learned the process, which is not difficult. Their clothing was, to some extent, deerskin, but mainly old clothes obtained ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... weapon. He had plenty of confidence in his visitor's ability to look out for herself, and felt reasonably sure that the bears would be sorry for having presumed upon her unprotected state. When he returned with the gun—an old, muzzle-loading duck-gun, with a huge bore—she accepted it with careless ease and held it as if it were a broom. But when he offered her the powder-horn and a little bag of buckshot, ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... had eaten nearly every horse and mule in the place. The idea which seemed general, that Plumer had a big force with him, was very amusing to them, considering they actually only numbered a few hundreds, and had, I think they said, two old muzzle-loading guns only with them. Having been enlisted a month before the war, they are the ...
— A Yeoman's Letters - Third Edition • P. T. Ross
... as I can learn, that a highly civilized and informed government like that of the French in 1870, entering into a war against a great rival, had only the old muzzle-loading cannon when their enemies were already equipped with modern breech-loading pieces, I must accept it on overwhelming evidence, in spite of ...
— Europe and the Faith - "Sine auctoritate nulla vita" • Hilaire Belloc
... farmer was armed with an old, muzzle-loading, single-barrelled duck-gun. He raised it to his shoulder and took aim at the one bright eye gleaming from behind the branch. Then he lowered it, and turned to his boarder with a mixture of ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... of the Polar and Grizzly. The polar bears of the north, and the Rocky Mountain grizzlies, a hundred years ago were bold and aggressive. That was in the days of the weak, small-bore, muzzle-loading rifles, black powder and slow firing. Today all that is changed. All those bears have recognized the fearful deadliness of the long-range, high-power repeating rifle, and the polar and the grizzly flee from man at the first sight of ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... will understand that in those early days we had only muzzle-loading guns, and for every one of those we had to have a pair of bullet-moulds the size of the rifle, and before starting out on an expedition it was necessary to mould enough bullets to last several weeks, if not the entire trip, and when you realize that almost any ...
— Thirty-One Years on the Plains and In the Mountains • William F. Drannan
... idea how low our standard of marksmanship was. We had not realized that the modern battle-ship had become such a complicated piece of mechanism that the old methods of training in marksmanship were as obsolete as the old muzzle-loading broadside guns themselves. Almost the only man in the navy who fully realized this was our naval attache at Paris, Lieutenant Sims. He wrote letter after letter pointing out how frightfully backward we were in marksmanship. I was much impressed by his letters; but Wainwright ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... made by myself in 1925, for use with my various muzzle-loading arms. It probably enjoys the distinction of being the last powder horn made in ...
— A Catalogue of Early Pennsylvania and Other Firearms and Edged Weapons at "Restless Oaks" • Henry W. Shoemaker
... and not I, for of the truth the Lord did guide and protect us. Has anything more wonderful happened in the world than this journey of a few farmers, cumbered with women and children, and armed only with old-fashioned muzzle-loading guns, into a vast, unknown land, peopled by savages and wild beasts? Yet, look what they did. They conquered Moselikatse; they broke the strength of Dingaan and all his Zulu impis; they peopled the Free State, the Transvaal, and Natal. That ...
— Swallow • H. Rider Haggard
... advantageous to employ the stronger material. Hence, in England, we had reason to congratulate ourselves on the certainty and cheapness of manufacture of wrought iron coils, as long as moderate charges of comparatively quick burning powder were employed, and as long as adherence to a muzzle-loading system permitted the projectiles to move away at an early period of the combustion of the charge. Then the pressures, though sharp, were of short duration, and were not thoroughly transmitted through the body of the gun, so that ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 324, March 18, 1882 • Various
... past again at full gallop, Shunan still not quite master of his horse and weapon at the same time, for the long-barreled, muzzle-loading rifle was difficult to manage from the back of a plunging horse. They wheeled and passed yet again; but this time, as they turned, they headed directly toward each other at ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... rolled up in flannel and hermetically sealed in separate tin canisters. Thus arranged, they would be impervious to damp, and might be carried conveniently. But I should decidedly provide myself with four double-barrelled muzzle-loading No. 10's as my regular battery; that, if first class, would never get out of order. Nothing gives such confidence to the gun-bearers as the fact of their rifles being good slayers, and they quickly learn to take a pride in their weapons, and to strive in the race to hand the spare ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... American mechanical genius; invented a method of converting muzzle-loading rifles into breech-loading; died unrewarded ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... the limit fixed by Folsom. Red Cloud and his chiefs came in accordingly, arrayed in pomp, paint and finery; shook hands grimly with the representatives of the Great Father, critically scanned the proffered gifts, disdainfully rejected the muzzle-loading rifles and old dragoon horse-pistols heaped before him. "Got heap better," was his comment, and nothing but brand new breech-loaders would serve his purpose. Promise them and he'd see what could be done to ...
— Warrior Gap - A Story of the Sioux Outbreak of '68. • Charles King |
