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Show AN OLD DUELING PISTOL. It Has Seen Four Centuries of Service and Is Still in Good Condition. Maj. Moore has among his collection of curios a dueling pistol wrhich was brc ught to this country from England by one of the earliest settlers of Virginia, Vir-ginia, says the Xew York Journal. The weapon, which is a flint-lock, is fully four hundred years old and is still in good condition and if capped with a bit of flint and loaded could be fired. . The pistol has a brass barrel, which unscrews about an inch from the flash-pan. flash-pan. To load it the barrel is unscrewed, un-screwed, the powder poured in and rammed down: The barrel is then replaced re-placed and the bullet, about three times as large as a buckshot, is dropped in. The sight is on the side of the barrel, about midway between the trigger trig-ger and the muzzle. Instead of sighting sight-ing over a point on the extreme top of the barrel, as one does when handling a modern revolver, the old pistol was held so that tho sight was taken over the knuckles of the person using it. The pistol was manufactured in London Lon-don and was brought to this country by a man named Mason, who was related to Lord Fairfax. It remained in the Mason family until 1S79, when it was given to nn old fisherman by Miss Mason, a granddaughter of the man who brought it over from old England. The old fisherman gave it away and it finally foun 1 its way into the hands of one Detective Kaff. who presented it to Maj. Moore, The descendants of the original possessor, pos-sessor, Air. Mason, still reside on the farm on which he settled some three hundred years ago in King George county, A'a. TIow many affairs of honor this "lingering eternity" of a barbarous custom has figured in is not known by its present owner, its history having been lost in the recent rapid changes of ownership. |