The Phoenician war-vessels, it is said, came out of Cadiz--or Gades, as it was then called--with what their opponents took to be brazen lions at their bows. These turned out to be some kind of machine from which enormous flames of fire were projected by explosives, to consume and destroy the ships of the Iberians. But the most generally accepted theory now is that gunpowder was invented in China some centuries before the Christian era and gradually found its way to Europe by way of India, Arabia, and Africa. As for the stories that it was invented either by Roger Bacon (1214-92) or by the German monk, Barthold Schwartz, in 1320, they must be certainly rejected, since there is evidence that cannon of some kind were in use long previous to Roger Bacon's birth. Doubtless he wrote something about the composition of gunpowder, but so might anyone to-day. That would not make him its inventor. Much less, then, can this invention be attributed to the German monk. It is probably correct that, in pounding certain ingredients in a mortar, he nearly blew himself "into the middle of next week"--as very many would-be chemical investigators have done at a much more recent date--and it may be that the sight of his pestle flying through the ceiling suggested to him that a mortar might be made of military use.[35] He may possibly, on this account, be credited with the invention of the muzzle-loading cannon, for it seems probable that the guns in use previous to 1320 were merely _cannae_, or tubes open at each end. The famous battery of three guns, which is said by some historians to have been used by the English at Crécy, was probably of this kind. Whether the guns were used there or not, it would not have been the first time such weapons made their appearance in European warfare, as seems to be assumed by some writers. More than 100 years previously cannon were employed by the Moors at the siege of Saragossa, in 1118. The Spaniards were not slow to adopt the invention, and in 1132 they built what is stated to have been a "culverin" throwing a 4-pound shot. "Culverin", which is a term, belonging to Tudor times, for a special type of gun, is evidently used as a general term for "cannon". Like the "Joe Chamberlain" and "Bloody Mary",[36] manned by the Naval Brigade in the Boer War, and other prominent specimens of the gun-maker's art, this first European cannon received a special name. It was christened "Salamonica". I have said that the Spaniards "built" this weapon. I wrote this advisedly, for all the earlier cannon were "built up" of staves of iron, or even wood, strongly hooped together with wrought-iron rings.