Bismarck weekly tribune., 1884-12-26
BRITISH GREAT GUNS.
WHAT ONE MAY SEE At WooLWIcH
ARSENAL, ENGLAND. 81
A Hundred Acres of Magazines and
Foundries The Gun Factory-An
Eighty One-Ton Infant Fa-
NOUS Old Cannon.

i " ~ 3 as 3
Foundries The Gun Factory-An
Eighty y-One-Ton Infant Fa-
NOUS Old Cannon.
Frank Yeigh in Detroit Free Press.]
In some way or other the secretary of war
overlooked me when in London, ! III 1t was
only necessary to drop him line at his
| headquarters in Pail Mall to receive a
| prompt reply in the shape of formal docu-
ment notifying me that the war department
had ordered the Woolwich arsenal authori-
ties to admit me to that establishment The
| ride down the river in a penny boat-pass-
| ing under London bridge, over the tunnel
and by Billingsgate, Greenwich and Black
| well-took about an hour. Reaching the
massive iron gate of the arsenal commit
| tee Of reception, composed of five as hand
some policemen as ever snored against a
lamp post had thoughtfully been provided,
one of whom led me into an Office, where I
was invited to sign my autographs simple
| request that always accede to.
Once inside the hundred acres of maga-
| zine; and foundries surround the visitor in
| bewildering profusion. Here and there odd
| little trains of cars drawn by odd little en-
gines went winding among the shops on mar
| row guage tracks. To the right Of the main
roadway was the cap factory, the shining
explosives pouring in streams from the
! swiftly working machines like wheat from a
tanning MILL Adjoining stood the bullet de-
partment where thousands of leaden pills Of
all shapes and sizes were being fashioned,
scores of boys manipulating the molds. In
succession came the laboratory for making
cartridges and projectiles, the gun carriage
and wagon departments, each occupying inn
mense long buildings. Workmen in large
squads were everywhere, in fact, about
10000 are employed in the works.
The center Of attraction is the gun factory,
established nearly 200 years ago by Ger
man. What monarehs of mee hanism were
being fashioned by the hand of mani
enormous tlitons, destined for death
dealing service. From the glowing cauldron
of fire-a Kissing shrine-the swarthy work.
men, with distended sinews and POWERFUL
muscles, carried the ill-shapen wrought iron
masses, smmering with a heat as conden3ed
as that from which it came, and laid them
on an iron bed. The building trem-
bles as the mighty trip-hammer-
the largest in the world-descends and solidi-
6es and shapens the cooling metal. At last
a solid piece OF iron Of the requisite length
and thickness is complete and is then re-
moved to another foundry on powerful
trucks where, resting in a semi-crcular bed,
large borers slowly but surely chisel out the
center, while the exterior is rounded and
smoothed by immense knives. Finally it is
placed among its comrades in the yard
where literally thousands of others-tield
pieces and mortars, hOwitZers and smooth
bores eighteen-pounders and eighty-one-
tonners-lay strewn around-a vast arma-
ment giving one a startling idea of the
horrors Of "grim-visaged war"
The eighty-one ton infant, stretching to a
length of twenty-seven feet, lay peacefully
at the entrance to the gun foundry, as docile
and harmless in his mental grandeur as
stranded whale. But let that gaping, omin-
GUS mouth once speak; let it but utter a
single kissing syllable, and death and de-
struction are the result. A trial of the great
gun was made at Dover. Four men rammed
down a gigantic charge of $50 pounds of
powder. At a given signal dense volume
OF smoke, preceded by a binding flash,
startled the assembled crowd. A few mo-
ments after and the projectile, weighing l.
700 pounds, struck and ploughed up the water
at a calculated distance of four miles, The
recoil of the gun carriage was no less than
seven feet. The doors and windows of the
surrounding houses ratified, others shook to
their found alton; the large panes of glass in
the lighthouse were blown out-and the
grim old monster suEsded
I wandered for an hour or more among
the warlike derelcts, huddled together by
the hundreds iii out-of-the-way corners
among pyramids of cannon-balls, chain shot,
rockets and shrapnels. Some had seen serv-
ice-old veterans, rusty, smoke -begrimmed
and crippled. In solitary corner lay
group Of Florentine guns OF 1850: near by
was long, senler cannon cast in 1877, while
beyond it were seen several pieces Of ord
nance from India and the Crimea.
Famous and war-tried cannon are treated
with great respect. The White Tower in
London is surrounded with curious collec-
tion Of old cannon, some Of very heavy cal
iber and highly decorated. One was cast at
Malta in 1773 with exquisite reljefs on the
barrel, and two brass guns taken by Gen.
Wolfe at Quebec are among the number
Mounted high on the parapet of old Edin-
boro's castle-the kings bastion-and over
looking the wonderful panorama of city and
country and sea, lies Mons Megs, the famous
piece Of ordnance which is said to have been
forged at Mons in Belgium in 1476 James
" employed it at the siege of Dumbarton
in 1882 It burst when firing salute in
honor of the duke of York in 1852; was re-
moved to the Tower of London in 1854, and
was restored to Scotland through the inter-
vention of Scott in 1929.
Windsor castle possesses few old-timers
as well, the most prominent being the pro-
truding head of a cannon surmount-
ing the flights Of stairs leading to the sum-
NIT of the Round Tower and commanding
full sweep down to the doorway.
The Little Chance.
New York Tribune]
How small chance stands between sue
cess and defeat is illustrated in the state
nent of a gentleman who stood by Mr.
Blaine at the Fifth Avenue hotel during the
now famous ministers meeting. "Just as
the last speaker before Dr. Burchard made
his peroration, the assembly, tired of hear
incr from their number: haoeosa To