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should always distrust the exaggerations of avanquished people. He calculates, that a ball,even of two hundred pounds, would require acharge of one hundred and fifty pounds of pow-der; and that the stroke would be feeble and im-potent, since not a fifteenth part of the masscould be inflamed at the same moment. Astranger as I am to the art of destruction, I candiscern that the modern improvements of artil-lery prefer the number of pieces to the weight ofmetal; the quickness of the fire to the sound, oreven the consequence, of a single explosion.Yet I dare not reject the positive and unanimousevidence of contemporary writers; nor can itseem improbable, that the first artists, in theirrude and ambitious efforts, should have trans-gressed the standard of moderation. ATurkishcannon, more enormous than that of Mahomet,still guards the entrance of the Dardanelles ;and if the use be inconvenient, it has been foundon a late trial that the effect was far from con-temptible. A stone bullet of eleven hundredpounds weight was once discharged with threehundred and thirty pounds of powder; at thedistance of six hundred yards, it shivered intothree rocky fragments, traversed the strait, andleaving the waters in a foam, again rose andbounded against the opposite hill.'

‘ The Baron de Tott (tom. iii, p. S5-S9), who fortified the Darda-nelles against the Russians , describes in a lively, and even comic,strain his own prowess, and the consternation of the Turks. Butthat adventurous traveller does not possess the art of gaining onr con-fidence

CHAP.

LXVIII