In The
Lower Room Is A Complete Train Of Artillery, Consisting Of Brass
Cannon And Mortars Fit To Attend An
Army of a hundred-thousand men;
but none of the cannon I observe there were above four-and-twenty
pounders;
The large battering-pieces, which carry balls of thirty-
two and forty-eight pounds weight, I perceive, are in the king's
store-houses at Deptford, Woolwich, Chatham, and Portsmouth. In the
armoury also we find a great many of the little cohorn mortars, so
called from the Dutch engineer Cohorn, who invented them for firing
a great number of hand-grenades from them at once; with other
extraordinary pieces cast at home, or taken from the enemy.
In the room over the artillery is the armoury of small arms, of
equal dimensions with that underneath, in which are placed, in
admirable order, muskets and other small arms for fourscore thousand
men, most of them of the newest make, having the best locks,
barrels, and stocks, that can be contrived for service; neither the
locks or barrels indeed are wrought, but I look upon them to be the
more durable and serviceable, and much easier cleaned. There are
abundance of hands always employed in keeping them bright, and they
are so artfully laid up, that any one piece may be taken down
without moving another. Besides these, which with pilasters of
pikes furnish all the middle of the room from top to bottom, leaving
only a walk through the middle, and another on each side, the north
and south walls of the armoury are each of them adorned with eight
pilasters of pikes and pistols of the Corinthian order, whose
intercolumns are chequer-work of carbines and pistols; waves of the
sea in cutlasses, swords, and bayonets; half moons, semicircles, and
a target of bayonets; the form of a battery in swords and pistols;
suns, with circles of pistols; a pair of gates in halberts and
pistols; the Witch of Endor, as it is called, within three ellipses
of pistols; the backbone of a whale in carbines; a fiery serpent,
Jupiter and the Hydra, in bayonets, &c. But nothing looks more
beautiful and magnificent than the four lofty wreathed columns
formed with pistols in the middle of the room, which seem to support
it.
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