Ibn Batuta, forty years later, describes Mahomed Tughlak as entering Dehli accompanied by elephants carrying small _balistae_ (_ra’ádát_), from which gold and silver pieces were shot among the crowd. And the same king, when he had given the crazy and cruel order that the population of Dehli should evacuate the city and depart to Deogir, 900 miles distant, having found two men skulking behind, one of whom was paralytic and the other blind, caused the former to be shot from a mangonel. (_I. B._ III. 395, 315.) Some old drawings represent the shaft as discharging the shot from a kind of spoon at its extremity, without the aid of a sling (_e.g._ fig. 13); but it may be doubted if this was actually used, for the sling was essential to the efficiency of the engine. The experiments and calculations of Dufour show that without the sling, other things remaining the same, the range of the shot would be reduced by more than a half. In some of these engines the counterpoise, consisting of a timber case filled with stones, sand, or the like, was permanently fixed to the butt-end of the shaft. This seems to have been the _Trebuchet_ proper. In others the counterpoise hung free on a pivot from the yard; whilst a third kind (as in fig. 17) combined both arrangements. The first kind shot most steadily and truly; the second with more force. Those machines, in which the force of men pulling cords took the place of the counterpoise, could not discharge such weighty shot, but they could be worked more rapidly, and no doubt could be made of lighter scantling. Mr. Hewitt points out a curious resemblance between this kind of Trebuchet and the apparatus used on the Thames to raise the cargo from the hold of a collier.