ARTS OF LIFE.
Development of Instruments, 183—Club, Hammer, 184—Stone-flake,
185—Hatchet, 188—Sabre, Knife, 189—Spear, Dagger, Sword,
190—Carpenter’s Tools, 192—Missiles, Javelin, 193—Sling,
Spear-thrower, 194—Bow and Arrow, 195—Blow-tube, Gun,
196—Mechanical Power, 197—Wheel-carriage, 198—Hand-mill,
200—Drill, Lathe, 202—Screw, 203—Water-mill, Wind-mill, 204.
The arts by which man defends and maintains himself, and holds rule over
the world he lives in, depend so much on his use of instruments, that it
will be well to begin with some account of tools and weapons, tracing
them from their earliest and rudest forms.
Man is sometimes called, to distinguish him from all lower creatures,
the “tool-using animal.” This distinction holds good in a general way,
marking off man with his spear and hatchet from the bull goring with his
horns, or the beaver carpentering with his teeth. But it is instructive
to see how plainly the ape tribes, coming nearest to ourselves in having
hands, have also rudiments of the implement-using faculty. Untaught by
man, they defend themselves with missiles, as when orangs in the durian
trees furiously pelt passers-by with the thorny fruit. The chimpanzee
in the forests is said to crack nuts with a stone, as in our Zoological
Gardens monkeys are often taught to do by the keepers, where they take
readily to the use of these and more difficult implements, as soon as the
thought has been put into their minds.
The lowest order of implements are those which nature provides
ready-made, or wanting just a finish; such are pebbles for slinging
or hammering, sharp stone splinters to cut or scrape with, branches
for clubs and spears, thorns or teeth to pierce with. These of course
are oftenest found in use among savages, yet they sometimes last on
in the civilized world, as when we catch up any stick to kill a rat
or snake with, or when in the south of France women shell the almonds
with a smooth pebble, much as the apes at Regent’s Park would do. The
higher implements used by mankind are often plainly improvements on
some natural object, but they are adapted by art in ways that beasts
have no notion of, so that it is a better definition of man to call him
the “tool-maker” than the “tool-user.” Looking at the various sorts of
implements, we see that they were not invented all at once by sudden
flashes of genius, but evolved, or one might almost say grown, by small
successive changes. It will be noticed also that the instrument which
at first did roughly several kinds of work, afterwards varied off in
different ways to suit each particular purpose, so as to give rise to
several different instruments. A Zulu seen at work scraping the stick
that is to be the shaft of his assegai, with the very iron head that is
to be fixed on it, may give an idea what early tool-making was like,
before men clearly understood that the pattern of instrument suitable
for a lance-head was not the best for cutting and scraping. We should be
horrified at the thought of the blacksmith pulling out one of our teeth
with his pincers, as our forefathers would have let him do; the forceps
we expect the dentist to use is indeed a variety of the smith’s tool,
but it is a special variety for a special purpose. Thus in the history
of instruments, the tools of the mechanic cannot well be kept separate
from the weapons of the hunter or soldier, for in several cases it will
be seen that both tool and weapon had their origin in some earlier
instrument that served alike to break skulls and cocoa-nuts, or to hack
at the limbs of trees and of men.
Among the simplest of weapons is the thick stick or cudgel, which when
heavier or knobbed passes into the club. Rude champions have delighted
in the ferocious roughness of such a gnarled club as Herkules in the
pictures carries on his shoulder, while others spent their leisure hours
in elegant shaping and carving, like that of the South Sea Island clubs
to be seen in museums. From savage through barbaric times the war-club
lasted on into the middle ages of Europe, when knights still smashed
helmets in with their heavy maces. Mostly used as a weapon, it only now
and then appears in peaceful arts, as in the ribbed clubs with which the
Polynesian women beat out bark cloth. It is curious to see how the rudest
of primitive weapons, after its serious warlike use has ceased, survives
as a symbol of power, when the mace is carried as emblem of the royal
authority, and is laid on the table during the sitting of Parliament or
the Royal Society. While the club has been generally a weapon, the hammer
has been generally an implement. Its history begins with the smooth
heavy pebble held in the hand, such as African blacksmiths to this day
forge their iron with, on another smooth stone as anvil. It was a great
improvement to fasten the stone hammer on a handle; this was done in
very ancient times, as is seen by the stone heads being grooved or bored
on purpose (see Fig. 54 _i_). Though the iron hammer has superseded
these, a trace of the older use of stone remains in our very name
_hammer_, which is the old Scandinavian _hamarr_, meaning both rock and
hammer.
[Illustration: FIG. 52.—Gunflint-maker’s core and flakes (Evans).]
From beating we come to hacking and cutting. At the earliest times known
of man’s life on the earth, his pointed and edged instruments of sharp
stone are among his chief relics. Even in the mammoth-period he had
already learnt not to be content with accidental chips of flint, but knew
how to knock off two-edged flakes. This art of flaking flint or other
suitable stones is the foundation of stone-implement making. Perhaps the
best idea of it may be gained from the Suffolk gunflint makers who at
this day carry on the primæval craft, though with better tools and for
so different a purpose. Fig. 52 shows a gunflint-maker’s core of flint,
with the flakes replaced where he has knocked them off, and the mark of
the blow is seen which brought away each flake. The flakes made by Stone
Age men for instruments may be three-sided like the Australian flake in
Fig. 53 _b_. But the more convenient flat-backed shape _a_, _c_, has been
used from the earliest known times. The flint core, Fig. 54 _f_, with
the flakes _e_ taken from it, shows how by previous flaking or trimming
it was prepared for the new flake to come off with a suitable back. The
finest flakes are those not struck off, but forced off by pressure with
a flaking-tool of wood or horn. The neat Danish flake, Fig. 53 _c_, was
no doubt made so, and the still more beautiful sharp flakes of obsidian
with which the native barbers of Mexico, to the astonishment of Cortes’
soldiers, used to shave. A stone flake just as struck off may be fit
for use as a knife, or as a spear head like that in Fig. 58 _a_; or by
further chipping it may be made into a scraper, arrowhead, or awl, like
those in Fig. 54.
[Illustration: FIG. 53.—Stone Flakes:—_a_, Palæolithic; _b_, Modern
Australia; _c_, Ancient Denmark.]
[Illustration: FIG. 54.—Later Stone Age (neolithic) implements. _a_,
stone celt or hatchet; _b_, flint spear-head; _c_, scraper; _d_,
arrow-heads; _e_, flint flake-knives; _f_, core from which flint-flakes
taken off; _g_, flint-awl; _h_, flint saw; _i_, stone hammer-head.]
[Illustration: FIG. 55.—Earlier Stone Age (palæolithic) flint picks or
hatchets.]
[Illustration: FIG. 56.—Stone Axes, &c. _a_, polished stone celt
(England); _b_, pebble ground to edge and mounted in twig handle (modern
Botocudo, Brazil); _c_, celt fixed in wooden club (Ireland); _d_, stone
axe bored for handle (England); _e_, stone adze (modern Polynesia).]
The oldest known tribes of men have left in the drift gravels of the
quaternary or mammoth-period not only rough flakes like Fig. 53 _a_, but
the stone implements already mentioned in the first chapter, of which
the drawing is here repeated in Fig. 55. Chipped to an edge all round,
they may have served with the pointed end as picks and the broad end as
hatchets. It is not clear whether any of them were fixed in handles, but
there are specimens found which have only one end chipped to a point,
but the other end of the flint left smooth, so that they were evidently
grasped in the hand to hack with. There is nothing to show that these
men of the old drift-period ever ground a stone implement to an edge.
Thus their stone implements were far inferior to the neatly-shaped
and sharp-edged ground celts of the later Stone Age, Fig. 54 _a_, Fig.
56 _a_. The word celt used for the various chisel-like instruments of rude
and ancient tribes is a convenient term, taken from Latin _celtis_, a
chisel, in the Vulgate translation of Job xix. 24, “celte sculpantur in
silice;” but it has been thought that “graven with a chisel (_celte_) in
the rock” is only a copyist’s blunder for “graven surely (_certe_) in the
rock;” and if so, then _celtis_ and _celt_ are curious fictitious words.
It may be worth while to mention that the name of the implements called
_celts_ has nothing to do with the name of the people called _Celts_ or
_Kelts_. A stone celt only requires a handle to make it into a hatchet.
This was done very simply by the forest Indians of Brazil, who would
pick up a suitable water-worn pebble, rub one end down to an edge, and
bind it in a twig, Fig. 56 _b_. Another rude way of mounting a celt was
to stick it into a club, so as to form a woodman’s or warrior’s axe such
as _c_, which shows one dug out of a bog in Ireland. The most advanced
method was to drill a hole through the stone blade to take the handle
as in _d_. When the stone blade is fixed with the edge across, the tool
becomes a carpenter’s adze, as _e_, which is the instrument used by the
canoe-building Polynesians.
[Illustration: FIG. 57.—_a_, Egyptian battle-axe; _b_, Egyptian falchion;
_c_, Asiatic sabre; _d_, European sheath-knife; _e_, Roman culter; _f_,
Hindu bill-hook.]
When metal came into use, the forms of the stone implements were imitated
in copper, bronze, or iron, and though the patterns were of course
lightened and otherwise improved to suit the new material, it may be
plainly seen that the stone hatchets and spear-heads in museums are the
ancestors (so to speak) of the metal ones made ever since. But also
the use of metal brought in new and useful forms which stone was not
suited to. An idea of these important changes may be gained by careful
looking at the series of metal cutting-instruments in Fig. 57. We begin
with _a_, which is an Egyptian bronze battle-axe, not very far changed
from the stone hatchet. But _b_, the bronze falchion carried also by
Egyptian warriors, is a sort of axe-blade with the handle not at the
back, but shifted down; this convenient alteration could not have been
made in the stone hatchet, which would have broken in the shank at the
first blow, while in metal it answers perfectly. It may very well have
been such transformed hatchets that led to the making of several most
important classes of weapons and tools, in which a blade with stout back
and front edge is fixed to a handle below it for chopping, slashing,
or cutting. Among these are all the various forms of the sabre or
scimitar, represented by _c_, all our ordinary knives, represented here
by the European sheath-knife _d_, and all cleavers, represented by the
Roman culter _e_. Nor does the development stop here, for the group of
instruments to which our bill-hook belongs is made with a concave edge,
as in the Indian form, _f_, and this again leads on to the still more
curved forms of the sickle and the scythe, which are not drawn here. Thus
there is some reason to suppose that all these instruments, whether tools
or weapons, or such as, like the bill-hooks of the early English and the
modern Malays, served alike for peace and war, may have all originated
from the early metal hatchet, which itself is derived from the still
earlier hatchet of stone.
[Illustration: FIG. 58.—_a_, Stone spear-head (Admiralty Is.); _b_, stone
spear-head or dagger-blade (England); _c_, bronze spear-head (Denmark);
_d_, bronze dagger; _e_, bronze leaf-shaped sword.]
From the early stone spear-heads another set of weapons seem to have
gradually arisen, as may be seen in Fig. 58. Looking at the spear from
the Admiralty Islands, _a_, the head of which is a large flake of
obsidian, it is plain that such a spear, when the shaft is broken off
short, becomes a dagger. In fact one often cannot tell whether the flint
blades of shapes like _b_, which are dug up in Europe, were intended
for mounting as spears or as daggers. Now the brittleness of stone was
against the use of stone blades more than a few inches long, but when
metal came in, the blades could be made long, taper, and sharp, thus
developing into two-edged daggers of deadly effect. In old Egyptian
pictures warriors are seen armed with spear and dagger, these two weapons
having blades of similar shape, so that the dagger may be described as
a large spear-head with a hilt to grasp in the hand. It seems as though
the metal dagger, by further lengthening, passed into the two-edged
sword, a weapon impossible in stone. To give an idea how this may have
come about, Fig. 58 shows three specimens from the bronze-period of
Northern Europe, where it is seen how the spear-head _c_ may have been
lengthened into the dagger _d_, and that again into the leaf-like sword
_e_. Straight two-edged swords may of course be used for cut or thrust,
or both. But on placing side by side a one-edged sabre and a two-edged
broadsword or rapier, it will now be seen that though both are called
swords, and are fitted up with similar hilts, hand-guards, and sheaths,
they are nevertheless two weapons of separate nature and origin, the
sabre being a transformed hatchet, while the rapier is a transformed
spear. This last spear-type, of which one modern development is the
bayonet, has mostly served for warlike purposes. Yet it is not unknown as
a peaceful implement, as may be seen in African two-edged knives, which
are evidently derived from spear heads; and also in the instrument which
our surgeons, conscious of its original model, call the little spear or
_lancet_.
To proceed to other kinds of tools. Thorns, pointed splinters of bone,
or flint flakes worked to a point (Fig. 54 _g_), served early tribes
of men as borers. The saw probably invented itself from a jagged flint
flake, which afterwards became the more artificial flint saw, Fig. 54
_h_. Thus the men of the Stone Age had in rude and early forms some of
the principal tools, which were improved upon in the ages of metal.
It is interesting to look in Wilkinson’s _Ancient Egyptians_ at the
contents of the Egyptian carpenter’s tool-basket, where the bronze adze,
saw, chisels, &c. show traces of likeness to the old stone implements.
On the other hand, this Egyptian set of tools, and still more those of
the ancient Greek and Roman carpenters, come remarkably near those we
are using at this day. One difference which kept the ancient carpenters
below ours was that they had not got beyond nails, never having seized
the idea of the screws which are so essential to modern construction,
nor of such tools as the screw-auger and gimlet, which depend on the
screw for their action. Among the ancient cultured nations of Egypt and
Assyria, handicrafts had already come to a stage which could only have
been reached by thousands of years of progress. In museums may still be
examined the work of their joiners, stonecutters, goldsmiths, wonderful
in skill and finish, and often putting to shame the modern artificer. Of
course these results were obtained by the ancient craftsman with what
we should consider a wasteful expenditure of labour. The use of steel
and other improvements have given the modern workman great advantages,
and what is more, the modern world has utterly outstripped the ancient
in the use of machines, as will be more fully seen presently when the
examination of the simpler instruments has been gone through.
To continue the survey of weapons. The cudgel or club is hurled by the
hunter or warrior, as when the Zulu will bring down an antelope at a
surprising distance with a throw of his round-headed club or knob-kerry,
and the Turk till modern times used to throw his mace in battle. The
sporting use outlasts the warlike, and even in England the fowler’s
throwing-cudgel is not unknown in country parts, where it is called a
_squoyle_. A flat thin club made curved or crooked by following the
branch it is cut out of has been liked by sportsmen of various nations
for its destructive whirling flight, as where the old Egyptian fowler
may be seen in the pictures flinging his flat curved throw-stick into
the midst of a flight of wild-duck. The Australians not only throw
wooden clubs and blades as weapons in this ordinary way, but make and
throw with surprising skill a peculiar light curved blade which has been
called the “come-back” boomerang, which veers in its course and returns
to the thrower, in ways which may be seen by cutting boomerangs out of a
visiting-card and flipping them. Again, it is evident that stones flung
by hand must have been among man’s first weapons. A simple instrument
for lengthening the arm and accumulating momentum is the sling, which
is so generally known even among the lowest tribes of man, that it is
probably of great antiquity.
[Illustration: FIG. 59.—Australian spear thrown with spear-thrower (after
Brough Smyth).]
The rudest spear, which is a mere pointed stick, is known everywhere in
the savage world, the point being often hardened by thrusting it into
the fire. Of spears, whether such clumsy sticks or more artificially
pointed weapons, the heavier kinds serve for thrusting and the lighter
for throwing, while intermediate sizes are fit for both purposes. It
is obvious how, to prevent the spear from coming out of the wound, it
came to be barbed. Another device, known widely among rude hunters and
fishers, is to put the point loosely on to the shaft, attaching it by a
cord of some length which uncoils when the point sticks in the animal
and the shaft drops off, so that the struck beast cannot break away the
shaft but drags it trailing, or the fish is held and marked down by the
floating wood. The distance to which the spear can be hurled by hand
is much increased by using a spear-thrower, acting like a sling. In
Captain Cook’s time the New Caledonians slung their spears with a short
cord with an eye for the finger, while the Roman soldiers had a thong
(_amentum_) made fast to their javelins near the middle of the shaft
for the same purpose. But wooden spear-throwers from one to three feet
long, grasped at one end and with a peg or notch at the other to take
the butt of the spear, have been more favourite with savage and barbaric
races. Thus Fig. 59 shows the Australian spear-thrower. This looks a
more primitive instrument than the bow, which indeed was not known to
these rude savages. It seems as though with the progress of weapons the
spear-thrower was discarded, for it is not found among any nation higher
than the old Mexicans, and even among them it seems to have been kept
up ceremonially from old times, rather than seriously used. The bow and
arrow (as General Pitt-Rivers suggests) may very likely have grown out
of a simpler contrivance, the spring-trap set in the woods by fitting a
dart to an elastic branch, so fastened back as to be let go by a passing
animal, in whose track it discharges the weapon. However invented, the
bow came into use in ages before history. Its arrow is a miniature of the
full-sized javelin, and the old stone arrow-heads found in most regions
of the world (see Fig. 54 _d_) show the existence of the bow-and-arrow
in the Stone Age, though hardly back to the drift-period. The art of
feathering the arrow goes back as far as history, and we know not how
much further. The simplest kind of long-bow is like that we still use
in the sport of archery, made of one piece of tough wood. Fig. 60_a_
shows a long-bow of the forest-tribes of South America, unstrung, with
its string hanging loose. What may be called the Tatar or Scythian bow is
formed of several pieces of wood or horn, united with glue and sinews.
Shorter than the long-bow, it gets its spring by being bent outside-in to
string it; thus the concave side of the ancient Scythian-bow _b_ would
become the convex side when strung. Bows of this class belong especially
to northern regions where there is a scarcity of tough wood suited to
making long-bows in one piece. As a warlike weapon, the bow lasted on in
Europe through the middle ages, and as late as 1814 the world looked on
with wonder to see the Cossack cavalry ride armed with bows-and-arrows
through the streets of Paris. A further step in the history of the bow
was to mount it on a stock, so as to take aim at leisure and touch a
trigger to let go the string. Thus it became the cross-bow, which seems
to have been invented in the East, and was known in Roman Europe about
the sixth century. In the figure, _c_ represents it in its perfected
form with a winch to draw the bow, as soldiers used it in the sixteenth
century. Cross-bows are still made in Italy for shooting birds with a
bolt or pellet.
[Illustration: FIG. 60.—Bows. _a_, South American long-bow (unstrung);
_b_, Tatar or Scythian bow; _c_, European cross-bow.]
To understand the next great move in missile weapons, it is necessary
to look back to savage life. The blow-tube, through which the forest
Indian of South America (Fig. 43) blows his tiny poisoned plug-darts,
or the similar Malay weapon called the sumpitan, may have been easily
invented wherever long large reeds grew. With simple darts or pellets
the blow-tube served for shooting birds, and it is often kept up as a
toy, as in our boys’ peashooters. When, however, gunpowder was applied
in warfare, its use was soon adapted to make the blow-tube an instrument
of tremendous power, when instead of the puff of breath in a reed, the
explosion of powder in an iron barrel drove out the missile. In the early
guns of the middle ages, the powder was fired by putting a coal or match
to the touchhole, as continued to be done till lately with cannon. For
hand-guns, this early match-lock was followed by the wheel-lock. This led
up to the flint-lock, which it is curious to compare with the cross-bow,
for the bent bow released by the trigger, which in the cross-bow did the
actual work of shooting out the missile, has now come down, in the form
of a spring and trigger, to the subordinate use of striking the light to
ignite the powder which actually propels the ball. In more modern guns,
the trigger and spring still remain, the improvement lying in the use of
fulminating silver in the cap, ignited by the blow of the hammer. The
rifling of the bullet by means of grooves in the barrel is the modern
representative of the ancient plan of slightly twisting the spear-head
or feathering the arrow to cause it to rotate, this giving increased
steadiness of flight. The modern conical shot shows a partial return
from the spherical bullet towards the ancient bolt or arrow, and at last
breech-loading goes back to the old plan of putting the arrows in at the
butt-end of the savage blow-tube.
As thus plainly appears, the ingenuity of man has been eminent in the
art of destroying his fellow-men. In surveying the last group of deadly
weapons, from the stone hurled by hand to the rifled cannon, there
comes well into view one of the great advances of culture. This is the
progress from the simple tool or implement, such as the club or knife,
which enables man to strike or cut more effectively than with hands or
teeth, to the machine which, when supplied with force, only needs to be
set and directed by man to do his work. Man often himself provides the
power which the machine distributes more conveniently, as when the potter
turns the wheel with his own foot, using his hands to mould the whirling
clay. The highest class of machines are those which are driven by the
stored-up forces of nature, like the saw-mill where the running stream
does the hard labour, and the sawyer has only to provide the timber and
direct the cutting.
As to how simple mechanical powers were first learnt, it is of no use
to guess in what rude and early age men found that stones or blocks too
weighty to lift by hand could be prized up and moved along with a stout
stick, or rolled on two or three round poles, or got up a long gentle
slope more easily than up a short steep rise. Thus such discoveries
as those of the lever, roller, and inclined plane, are quite out of
historical reach. The ancient Egyptians used wedges to split off their
huge blocks of stone, and one wonders that, knowing the pulley as they
did, it never appears in the rigging of their ships (see Fig. 71). A
draw-well with a pulley is to be seen in the Assyrian sculptures, where
also a huge winged bull is being heaved along with levers, and dragged on
a sledge with rollers laid underneath.
[Illustration: FIG. 61.—Ancient bullock-waggon, from the Antonine Column.]
The wheel-carriage, which is among the most important machines ever
contrived by man, must have been invented in ages before history. To
see what constructive skill the leading nations had already attained
to in times we reckon as of high antiquity, it is worth while to
examine closely the Egyptian war-chariots, with their neatly-fitted and
firmly-tired spoke-wheels turning on their axles secured by linchpins
while the body, pole, and double harness show equal technical skill. In
looking for some hint as to how wheel-carriages came to be invented, it
is of little use to judge from such high skilled work as was turned out
by these Egyptian chariot-builders, or by the Roman _carpentarii_ or
carriage-builders from whom our _carpenters_ inherit their name. But as
often happens, rude contrivances may be found which look as though they
belonged to the early stages of the invention. The plaustrum or farm-cart
of the ancient world in its rudest form had for wheels two solid wooden
drums near a foot thick, and made from a tree-trunk cut across, which
drums or wheels did not turn on the axle but were fixed to it; the
axle was kept in place by wooden stops, or passed through rings at the
bottom of the cart, and went round together with its pair of wheels,
as children’s toy carts are made. It is curious to notice how, under
changed conditions, the builders of railway-carriages have returned to
this early construction. In the ancient cart, Fig. 61, the squared end of
the axle shows that it must turn with the wheels. In such countries as
Portugal the old classic bullock-cart on this principle is still to be
seen, and it has been reasonably guessed that such carts tell the story
how wheel-carriages came to be invented. Rollers were early used, on
which a block of stone or other heavy weight was trundled. Suppose such a
roller made of a smoothed tree-trunk to be improved by cutting the middle
part smaller, so that it became an axle and pair of broad wheels in one
piece, then by making this axle work underneath the rudest framework, the
simplest imaginable wheel-carriage is made. If the first notion of a cart
were thus suggested, the wheels might afterwards be made separately and
pinned on to the square axle, and provided with tires. Then, for light
wheels and smooth ground, the wheels would at last be made to turn on
fixed axles. This is only conjecture, but at any rate it puts clearly
before our minds what the nature of a carriage is.
Another ancient machine is the mill. The rudest tribes of savages had a
simple and effective means ready to hand for powdering charcoal and ochre
to paint themselves with, or for the more useful work of bruising wild
seeds gathered for food. The whole apparatus consists of a roundish stone
held in the hand, and a larger hollowed stone for a bed. It is curious to
notice how closely our pestle and mortar still keeps to this primitive
type. Now any one using the pestle and mortar may notice that it works
in two ways, the stuff being either pounded by striking, or ground by
rubbing against the side of the mortar. When people took to agriculture,
and grain became a chief part of their food, and mealing it the women’s
heavy work, forms of mealing-stones came into use suited not for pounding
but for grinding only, and doing this more perfectly. An example may be
seen in Fig. 62, a rude ancient corn-crusher dug up in Anglesey, the
stone muller or roller having its sides hollowed for the hands of the
grinder, who worked it back and forward on the bed-stone. The perfection
of such a corn-crusher may be seen in the “metate” with its neatly shaped
bed and rolling-pin of lava, with which the Mexican women crush the maize
for their corn-cakes or tortillas. But it is by one stone revolving upon
the other that grain is best ground, and here we have the principle of
the mill. The quern or hand-mill of the ancient world in its simple form
consisted of two circular flat mill stones, the upper being turned by a
handle, while the grain was poured in through the hole in the centre,
and came out as meal all round the edge. This early hand-mill has lasted
on into the modern world, and Fig. 63 shows “two women grinding at the
mill,” as they might be seen in the Hebrides in the last century; the
long stick, which hangs from a branch above, has its end in a hole in
the upper stone, and a cloth is spread on the ground to catch the meal.
The quern is still used in north Scotland and the islands. If the reader
will notice the construction of a modern flour-mill, it will be seen that
the neatly faced and grooved millstones are now of great weight, and the
upper one balanced on the pivot which gives it rapid rotation from below
by means of water or steam-power, but notwithstanding these mechanical
improvements, the essential principle of the primitive hand-mill is still
there.
[Illustration: FIG. 62.—Corn-crusher, Anglesey (after W. O. Stanley).]
[Illustration: FIG. 63.—Hebrides women grinding with the quern or
hand-mill (after Pennant).]
Another group of revolving tools and machines begins with the drill.
The simplest mode of twirling the boring-stick between the hands is to
be seen in fire-making (Fig. 72). In this clumsy way rude tribes know
how to bore holes through hard stone by patiently twirling a reed or
stick with sharp sand and water. This primitive tool was improved both
for making fire and boring holes, by winding round the stick a thong
or cord, which by being pulled backward and forward worked the drill,
as the ancient shipwrights boring their timbers are described in the
Odyssey (ix. 384). The ingenious plan of using a bow with its string to
drive the drill, so that one man can manage it, was already known in the
old Egyptian workshops, but the still more perfect Archimedean drill is
modern. The turning-lathe seems to have had its origin in the drill. To
those who have only seen the lathe in its improved modern forms this may
not be clear, but it is seen by looking at the old-fashioned pole-lathe
with which the turner used to shape his wooden bowls and chair-legs,
which were made to revolve by a cord pulled up and down, on somewhat the
same principle as the Homeric drill. The foot-lathe, with its crank and
continuous revolution, superseded this, to be itself encroached upon by
the introduction of steam-power for driving, and even for applying the
tool in the self-acting lathe.
In examining these groups of instruments and machines, the development
of many of them has been traced back till their origins are lost in dim
præhistoric ages, or to where ancient history can show them arising from
a fresh idea or a new turn given to an old one. It is seldom possible
to get at the real author of an ancient invention. Thus no one knows
exactly when and how that wonderful mechanical contrivance, the screw,
appeared. It was familiar to the Greek mathematicians, and the screw
linen-presses and oil-presses of classic times look almost modern in
their construction. In the period of ancient civilization there appear
the beginnings of that immense change which is remodelling modern life,
by inventions which set the forces of nature to do man’s heavy work
for him. This great change seems to have been especially brought on by
contrivances to save the heavy toil of watering the fields. A simple
hand-labour contrivance of this kind is the shadoof of the Nile valley,
where a long pole with a counterpoise at one end is supported on posts,
and carries a bucket hanging to the longer end to dip up water from
below. One need not travel to the East to watch this old contrivance,
for it is to be seen at work in our brickfields. For irrigation, it
was mechanically an improvement on this to set a gang of slaves to
turn a great wheel with buckets or earthen jars at its circumference,
which rose full from the water below, and as they turned over emptied
themselves into a trough at a higher level. But when such a wheel was
built to dip in a running stream, then the current itself would turn
the wheel, and thus would come into existence the noria or irrigating
water-wheel often mentioned in ancient literature, and to be seen still
at work both in the East and in Europe. By these or some similar steps
of invention the water-wheel was made a source of power for doing other
work, such as grinding corn, instead of the women at the quern or the
slaves at the tread-mill, or the mill-horse in his everlasting round. As
the Greek epigram says, “Cease your work, ye maids who laboured at the
mills, sleep and let the birds sing to the returning dawn, for Demeter
has bidden the water nymphs to do your task; obedient to her call, they
throw themselves on the wheel and turn the axle and the heavy mill.”
The classical corn-mill, with the cog-wheels driven by the water-wheel,
may have been a good deal like the water-mills still working on our
country streams. Such machinery was early applied to grinding corn, and
afterwards to other manufactures, so that now the word mill no longer
means a grinding-mill only, but is also used where machinery is driven
by power for other purposes. It was a great movement in civilization for
the water-mill and its companion contrivance the wind-mill to come into
use as force-providers, doing all sorts of labour, from the heaviest work
of the European factory down to turning the Tibetan prayer-wheels, which
go round repeating for ever the sacred Buddhist formula. Within the last
century the civilized world has been drawing an immense supply of power
from a new source, the coal burnt in the furnace of the steam-engine,
which is already used so wastefully that economists are uneasily
calculating how long this stored-up fossil force will last, and what must
be turned to next—tide force or sun’s heat—to labour for us. Thus, in
modern times, man seeks more and more to change the labourer’s part he
played in early ages, for the higher duty of director or controller of
the world’s force.