When hunting through wet jungles, or the reeds of the marsh, percussion caps can be rendered almost waterproof by melting a little beeswax on a piece of tin and then dipping the mouth of each separate cap in it. These, when cold, are set aside for use. When placed on the nipple, the wax forms a shield between the cap and nipple, which prevents the water from working its way up. All vegetable oil used about gun-locks should be prepared as follows:—Partly fill a common vial with oil, throw in a half charge of shot, hang it in the air with the cork out, and in a few days drain off all the clear oil from the top for use.
Gun cleaning.
Spirits of turpentine, when it can be procured, is very valuable for cleaning the interiors of guns, pistols, and rifles. When water is used, wash the barrels out thoroughly with cold water, making use of a tough wooden rod with a number of notches at the end. Round this a piece of woollen cloth may be twisted until of a size to act as a sucker in the barrel. Woollen is better than tow, linen, or cotton, as there is no danger of ignitable threads being left behind, and it can be used repeatedly by washing and drying it. When the barrels are thoroughly clean, fill them with boiling water. When this has all run off through the nipple holes, commence with a fresh strip of cloth to dry out the barrels, which must be held in a folded cloth, in order to guard the hand from the heat of the water. When quite dry, and before the barrels are cold, finish off with a little spirits of turpentine. Lead may be removed by the use of a little quicksilver. The cleaning of fire-arms in a wild country is a matter of the very greatest importance, and should never be entrusted to servants, unless, from long service and great experience, they may be implicitly depended on. Even with such followers about us, we always, however fatigued, clean our own guns.
It not unfrequently happens that white men residing alone or in small communities in the vicinity of numerous and powerful native tribes possess cannon of some kind or other, generally small signal guns from merchant ships, perhaps recovered from wrecks upon the coast, or field-pieces abandoned as not worth the trouble of bringing away when some military outpost has ceased to be occupied.
Mounting cannon.
During 1863 and 1864 the barbarous and desultory war between the Namaqua Hottentots and the Damaras, whom they had so long oppressed, was keeping the country in a state of alarm for many hundred miles around, and we were requested to take charge of a couple of brass yacht guns. It was necessary to mount them, so that they might be easily moved from point to point on the plain around the village; and for this purpose we took for each the hinder wheels and axle of a Cape waggon, inserting a pole to serve as the “trail” into the socket of the “lang-wagen” in the centre of the axle; we then took a plank of stinkwood, 1ft. wide, 3in. thick, and about 4ft. long. About 1ft. from the foremost end a stout bolt passed through it and the centre of the axle so as to let it work freely, the after end was tapered to a point and travelled on a quadrant, made from the felloe of an after wheel.
On this, as a swivel bed, we bolted down a pair of cheeks of 2in. stinkwood to carry the guns. The quoins and wedges ran in grooves, formed by 1in. slips of stinkwood nailed upon the bed, to which they were secured by lanyards of raw hide; the boxes for ammunition on either side were covered with raw hide, and that containing the powder was thickly lined with green baize; the matches were kept in a small box in front of the gun-carriage; the fuze-holder was made from the segment of a hollow brass curtain ring fixed to a handle of hard wood; the fuze itself was a strip of calico 1in. broad, doubled and loosely twisted into a two-stranded rope; it was steeped in a solution of gunpowder, and the colour indicated its strength—light grey was slow match, and dark grey was quick.
As we did not contemplate moving the guns farther than necessary for the defence of the village, we made no provision for yoking draught oxen, but this could easily have been done if needed. It was enough for our purpose to provide man ropes, one pair behind the gun and one before, so that, either in advance or retreat, its muzzle might be towards the enemy.
The bullets were all tied up in calico, with wads made by cutting off sections of soft deal rods, and cartridges of twelve or fourteen musket balls or fifty revolver bullets were made up.