Page:Our Indian Army.djvu/473

Rh by land against that well-defended post, with artillery, musketry, and ginjalls.

The Burmese fire-rafts were ingeniously contrived and strongly constructed, being made almost entirely of strong bamboos, firmly wrought together. Between every two or three rows of bamboos there was a line of earthen jars filled with petroleum, or earth-oil; while cotton, gunpowder, and other inflammable ingredients were distributed in different parts of the floating infernal machine, and the almost inextinguishable fierceness of the flames proceeding from it could scarcely be conceived. Many of the rafts were considerably more than a hundred feet long,