While the town was thus full of men a committee from them came to me to solicit pardon or a suspension of prosecution against the persons who took away the Gunpowder. I told them I could not promise them any such thing; but if they dispersed and restored the gunpowder, which I most earnestly exhorted them to do, I said I hoped His Majesty may be thereby induced to consider it an alleviation of the offence. They parted from me, in all appearance, perfectly disposed to follow the advice I had given them; and having proceeded directly to the rest of their associates they all publickly voted ... to return home.... But, instead of dispersing, the people went to the Castle in the night headed by Mr. Sullivan and took away sixteen pieces of cannon, about sixty muskets and other military stores and brought them to the out Borders of the town. On Friday morning, the 16th, Mr. Folsom, the other delegate, came to town that morning with a great number of armed men who remained in Town as a guard till the flow of the tide in the evening when the cannon were sent in Gondolas up the river into the country and they all dispersed without having done any personal injury to any body in the town. [Illustration: Copyright, Detroit Publishing Company A DISTANT VIEW OF FORT CONSTITUTION] On the Fourth of July, 1809, an explosion of powder took place at Fort Constitution in which four men and three boys were killed and a number of bystanders wounded. The cause of the explosion was the carelessness of a sergeant with a lighted fuse, and the unlucky hour that he chose for his celebration was a time when his colonel (Colonel Walbach) had a number of guests to dinner. None of the diners were injured, and a quaint contemporary account tells their natural distress at various of the phenomena around them. “One poor fellow,” says this account, “was carried over the roof of the house and the upper half of his body lodged on the opposite side near the window of the dining-room; the limb of another was driven through a thick door over the dining-room leaving a hole in the door the shape of the foot.” The appearance of Fort Constitution to-day is not very warlike and it does not play a very active part in the city’s defences. The walls of the older part of the fort are of rough stone topped with brick. Over the arch of the sally-port here is a date, 1808. These walls have been partly enclosed by unfinished walls of granite of later construction.