And they could shoot too, with their rusty matchlocks or clumsy snaphances.

"The first muskets were very heavy, and could not be fired without a rest; they had matchlocks, and barrels of a wide bore, that carried a large ball and charge of powder, and did execution at a greater distance.

Their conflicts are very desultory, being carried on by twos and threes, or sixes and sevens, and with sticks, and stones, and other weapons, if they cannot get knives, or matchlocks.

Four men armed with matchlocks showed themselves.

" Their arms consist merely of bows and arrows and daggers; a few matchlocks of Kabul manufacture have found their way into the country, but no attempts have been made to imitate them.

Billy Fish saunters round and gets as close to Daniel as he could, and behind him stood his twenty men with matchlocks.

The Bashkai troops stuck to Billy Fish all they were worth, but their matchlocks wasn't half as good as the Kabul breech-loaders, and four of them dropped.

This was very nice of them, for very soon I had a complete list of the garrison of each sangar, and from where I was could see the sort of gun they were armed with,a few rifles among the lower sangars, and nearly all matchlocks among the higher and more inaccessible ones.

They were soldiers, and I knew the tall mitre-caps of the 13th, and saw the shafts of light from the sunrise come flashing round their bodies, and glance off the barrels of their matchlocks.

The while chalk was a bulwark between us and the foe; and though one or two of them loosed off their matchlocks, trying to get at us sideways, they could not even see their quarry, and 'twas only shooting at a venture.

They paid little heed to us as we passed, though the sleepy guards, who were lounging on their matchlocks, nodded to our conductor, and thus we went right through that evil-smelling white-washed room.

It was in the tenth year of our captivity, and in the twenty-sixth of my age, that one morning instead of the guard marching us to work, they handed us over to a party of mounted soldiers, from whose matchlocks and long whips I knew that we were going to leave Ymeguen.

From some spies employed by the rajah of Cochin, it was understood that this caymal had a force of three thousand nayres, seven hundred of whom were archers, and forty were, armed with matchlocks; besides which all their towns were well fortified with trenches.

Sixty-six of these were paraws, having their sides defended with bags of cotton by advice of the Italians, to ward off our shot; and each of these had twenty-five men and two pieces of ordnance, five of the men in each paraw being armed with calivers or matchlocks.

In the largest of these castles there were forty men, in others thirty-five, and the smallest had thirty, all armed with bows or matchlocks, besides ordnance; and they seemed quite an irresistible force in comparison of ours, which consisted only of two caravels and two armed boats.

There is the kormbhe, a very tough wood with a red stringy bark, of which the jungle men make a kind of touchwood for their matchlocks, and the parass, whose peculiarity is that at times it bursts into a wondrous wealth of bright crimson blossom without a leaf being on the tree.

Their arms are muskets, with matchlocks, sabres, and bucklers.

Vanished had those magnificent bodies of Taifourchis, armed and disciplined in the Chinese manner, those superb lancers, those Kalmuck archers, bending bows five feet high, those "tigers" with their daubed shields and their matchlocks.

It carried eighty guns and four hundred matchlocks, besides other warlike implements, and was deemed so strong that it disdained the help of a convoy.

The matchlocks of those days were cumbrous arms, and it was at the point of the pike

Many of their matchlocks had been rendered useless.

The Arabs at first stood to their guns with great determination, but their artillery was, of course, speedily silenced or dismounted by the superior weight and rapidity of the English fire; and though the troops were galled while in the boats by matchlocks from the shore, both the town and the island of Seerah were carried by storm without much difficulty.

Their weapons are mostly spears, and knives and matchlocks.

Blood flowed in almost every apartment; broken swords, daggers, and matchlocks lay in all directions, shewing how terrible the strife had been.

What shots from antique pistols, matchlocks, from crossbows and catapults, are let fly at the foe!