HISTORY OF GUNPOWDER.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3766, 10 August 1883, Page 4

HISTORY OF GUNPOWDER.

A writer in the North China Herald on the history of gunpowder in China assorts that this explosive! was known in the seventh century of our ent. The alchemists of the ILin dynasty, and st ibrfci [i toutly in the •fourth and following centuries, worked with saltpetre and sulphur, as well as cinnabar, rod oxide of led, and other common compounds. But in the seventh century we find gunpowder used to make a. crackling Bound und to all'ord an agreeable sight to the court of Sui Yang-ti, (lie emperor of that time. The earliest exhibitions of fireworks mentioned in Chinese history belong io that date. The substances used in the composition of gunpowder are all native to China, and the writer appears to prove conclusively that the Arabs derived the art of firework making, as well us gunpowder, from the Chinese. The discovery once made, the Chinese alchemists, owing to the badness of their hypotheses and the futility of their aim-*, were slow at improvement. But the doctors of the Arab colonies in China carried to Bagdad the germs of the Chinese discoveries, and there they wore elaborated into new forms. In short, in many arts and sciences the Arabs learnt from China, and, assisted by Ncstorians, Jews, and Greeks, improved on ■what they learned. In course of years, cannon, matchlocks, and shells for use in .sieges were brought to China from Mohammedan countries. There are faint traces in the eleventh century of rude lire-arms ; in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries the records of their use in the Chinese ■wars become frequent and distinct. The Golden Tartars, in their wars with South China in the twelfth century, used cannon which they called " heaven-shaking thunder." In an iron tube was placed powder which was "set lire to, and would burn down half a square li of houses and pierce v coat of mail made of iron rings." It is expressly staled that Genghis Khan, the Mongol conqueror, used cannon in his wars. Kubhii Khan also used these weapons lit a siege celebrated in Chinese history— that of Siang-yang. Hearing, it is said, the sound of the explosion, which shook the sky, and seeing that the balls entered seven feet into the earth, the Chinese defenders of the city capitulated. It is clear that China owed its knowledge of artillery to tho Mohammedans. In the fourteenth century commenced the European intercourse with China, which then abandoned tho Arabs, and took the Portuguese as teachers in the construction of weapons of ■warfare.