previous next

Greek fire.

The rebel General Beauregard protests against the Federal General Gillmore's use of “Greek fire” against Charleston, as an outrage against humanity, unworthy of civilized nations, etc.

The name “Greek fire” is applied to a peculiar compound of bitumen, naphtha, and pitch that burns on the surface or under water. It is composed largely of what the chemists call “arsenical alcohol,” most destructive in its effects, and, in course of its discharge, emitting a most offensive odor. “Greek fire” has frequently been employed in European wars, but not often in modern times. The secret of its preparation and use was derived from a native of Heliopolis, Syria, about a thousand years ago.--New-York Express.

Van Nostrand. New York, New York. 1862.

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.

An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.

hide Places (automatically extracted)

View a map of the most frequently mentioned places in this document.

Sort places alphabetically, as they appear on the page, by frequency
Click on a place to search for it in this document.
Europe (1)
Charleston (South Carolina, United States) (1)

Download Pleiades ancient places geospacial dataset for this text.

hide People (automatically extracted)
Sort people alphabetically, as they appear on the page, by frequency
Click on a person to search for him/her in this document.
Gillmore (1)
Beauregard (1)
hide Display Preferences
Greek Display:
Arabic Display:
View by Default:
Browse Bar: