A granite ball burst through the bows of the _Active_, and rolling aft destroyed all in its career, till it was brought up abreast of the main hatchway; a second tore away the whole barricade of her forecastle and fell into the sea to starboard; a third lodged in the bends abreast of the main-chains, and then tumbled overboard. ("Duckworth's Dispatches," &c.) Baron de Tott tells us that he had seen one of these guns, which had been cast in the reign of Amurath, fired. Its ball weighed eleven hundredweight, and required a charge of powder amounting to 330 pounds. At the distance of 800 fathoms he saw this enormous globe divide into three pieces, which crossed the strait and rebounded from the rocks opposite. One of these guns was sent to Woolwich, in exchange for an Armstrong breech-loader, and bears the inscription-- "_Help o Allah! Mahomet Khan, the son of Murad!_" Louis XII. of France had a bombarde cast which is said to have thrown a ball of 500 lbs. from the Bastile to Charenton; but the guns of these times were destitute of trunnions, dolphin-rings, or breech-buttons. Another enormous cannon of Mahomet II. is still to be seen, at Negroponte, used at its capture by him from the Venetians in 1470. It defends the south side of Kastro, and is the most remarkable monument there. There is now preserved in the Castle of San Juliao da Barra, ten miles from Lisbon, a gun that was captured at the siege of Diu, on the southern coast of Gujirat, in 1546, by a gallant Portugese cavalier, Dom John de Castro, which is destitute of the appliances named, and is of some remarkable metal. It bears upon it a Hindoo inscription, to the effect that it was cast in 1400. It is 20 feet 7 inches long; its external diameter at the centre is 6 feet 3 inches, and it discharges a ball one hundredweight. In ancient times there was a fondness for bestowing upon these great guns some peculiar and dignified name. Twelve brass cannon cast in 1503 for Louis XII., being all of remarkable size, he named after the greatest peers of France. The Spaniards and Portuguese named them after certain saints; thus, when the Emperor Charles V. departed to attack Tunis, his bombardes were named after the Twelve Apostles. In the Malaga there is still an 80-pounder of great antiquity named the "Terrible." Two very curious 60-pounders in the arsenal at Bremen are each named "The Messenger of Bad News;" an 80-pounder at Berlin, now in the Royal Arsenal, is named "The Thunderer;" at Milan there is a 70-pounder called the "Pimontelle" (or the little spicer); and another at Bois le Duc is styled _Le Diable_. A third in the Castle of St. Angelo at Rome, made of the nails which fastened the copper-plates composing the roof of the ancient Pantheon, bears upon it this inscription-- "_Ex clavis trabalibus porticus Agrippæ._"