ARTS OF LIFE—(_continued_).
Dwellings:—Caves, 229—Huts, 230—Tents, 231—Houses, 231—Stone
and Brick Building, 232—Arch, 235—Development of Architecture,
235. Dress:—Painting skin, 236—Tattooing, 237—Deformation of
Skull, &c., 240—Ornaments, 241—Clothing of Bark, Skin, &c.,
244—Mats, 246—Spinning, Weaving, 246—Sewing, 249—Garments,
249. Navigation:—Floats, 252—Boats, 253—Rafts, 255—Outriggers,
255—Paddles and Oars, 256—Sails, 256—Galleys and Ships, 257.
We have next to examine the dwellings of mankind. Thinking of the nests
of birds, the dams of beavers, the tree-platforms of apes, it can
scarcely be supposed that man at any time was unable to build himself a
shelter. That he does not always do so is mostly because while on the
move from place to place he may be content to sleep in the open, or take
to the natural shelter of a tree or rock. Thus in the Andaman Islands
the roving savages have been noticed to resort to the sea-shore, where,
under some overhanging cliff that kept off the wind, they would scoop
themselves out each a hole in the sand to lie in. Rock-shelters under the
cliffs were in Europe the resort of the ancient savages, as is proved
by the bones and flint flakes and other remains that are found lying
there in the ground. Caves are ready-made houses for beast or man. It
has been already mentioned (p. 31) how in such countries as England and
France, caverns were the abodes of the old tribes of the reindeer and
mammoth period, and the Bushmen of South Africa are a modern example of
rude tribes thus given to dwelling in caves in the rocks. But caverns are
so convenient, that they are now and then still used in the civilized
world, and most of us have seen some cave in a cliff forming the back of
a fisherman’s cottage, or at least a storehouse. It is not so much with
these natural dwellings that we are here concerned as with artificial
structures, however rude, set up by man for his shelter.
In the depths of Brazilian forests, travellers have come upon the
dwellings of the naked Puris, which are not even huts, only sloping
screens made by setting up a row of huge palm-leaves some eight feet
long, leaning against a cross-pole. Being put up to windward, this
shelters the lazy Indian as he lolls in his hammock slung between two
trees, and with the dense foliage overhead life is not comfortless on
fine days, though in bad weather the family and dogs have to crouch
defenceless round the wood fire on the ground. Even in these tropical
forests, what is generally met with is a real hut, though it may be such
a rude one as the Botocudos make with these same great palm-leaves,
sticking a number of them with their stalks in the ground in a circle,
and bringing their points together, so as to form a roof overhead. The
Patachos go to work more artificially, bending together young growing
trees and poles stuck in the ground, so that by binding their tops
together they form a framework which is then thatched over with large
leaves. Much the same lesson in primitive architecture may be learnt
from the natives of Australia, among whom a party camping out will be
content to set up a line of leafy boughs in the ground to form a screen
or breakwind for the night; but when they take the pains to interlace
such boughs overhead, the screen becomes a hut, and where they stay for
a while they will make a regular framework of branches, covering them
in with sheets of bark, or leaves and grass, and even laying on sods or
daubing the outside with clay. The invention of the simple round hut
is thus easily understood. It is plain, too, how a conical hut, when
roving tribes like the American Indians carry from place to place its
poles and skins or sheets of bark, becomes in fact a portable tent, and
this shows how tents came to be invented. The more cultured herdsmen of
the East carry for their tent-coverings sheets of felted hair or wool,
and we ourselves use for temporary shelter tents of canvas. Indeed one
has only to look at the common bell-tent of the soldier to see that it
is a transformed savage hut. Now the circular hut, whether beehive or
conical, is low to creep into and small to lie or crouch in. More room is
often got by digging the earth out some feet deep within, but a greater
improvement in construction is to raise the hut itself on posts or a
wall, so that what was at first the whole house now becomes the roof.
Thus is built the round hut with its side-posts filled in with wattle
and mud, or its solid earthen wall carrying the thatched roof which may
reach beyond in shady eaves. Such were in ancient times common peasants’
dwellings in Europe, as they still are in other quarters of the world,
and indeed we perhaps keep up a memory of them in the round thatched
summer-houses in our gardens, which are curiously like the real huts of
barbarians. Next, as African travellers remark, one great sign of higher
civilization is when people begin to build their houses square-cornered
instead of round. The circular hut to be easily built must be small, and
room is best gained by building the house oblong, with a ridge pole
along the roof where the sloping poles from the sides meet. By being able
to build to any required length, it became possible for many families,
often twenty, to live together in village-houses as rude peoples often
do. In barbaric countries spacious houses are built with the roofs
carried on lofty posts with cross-timbers, or on solid wails of earth or
stones; in fact they are constructed on much the same principles as our
modern houses, though more rudely.
It does not seem difficult to make out how stone and brick architecture
came into use. Where wood is scarce, men readily take to building wails
of stones, turf, or earth. Thus the Australians are known to build
shelters by heaping up loose stones as a wall, and roofing with sticks
laid across. Rough stones, though they make good embankments and low
walls, would be too unsteady for high walls, except slaty and stratified
slabs which form natural building-stones. With mere stones out of the
ground dwellings would hardly be built of a higher kind than the curious
beehive-houses of the Hebrides, whose small rudely vaulted chambers are
formed by the piled stones overlapping inwards till they almost meet
above, and covered in with growing turf, so that they look like grassy
hillocks with passages for the dwellers to creep in. This primitive
building is very ancient, and though such houses are no longer made,
the old ones still serve as shealings in summer. The ancient Scotch
underground dwellings or “weems,” (_i.e._ caves) have chambers of rough
stones, and remind antiquaries of Tacitus’ account of the caves dug by
the ancient Germans and heaped over with dirt, where they stored their
grain and took refuge themselves from the cold, and in time of war from
the enemy. When the craft of the mason is brought in, buildings of a
higher order begin. The stones may at first be merely trimmed to fit
one another like the pieces of a mosaic, as in the so-called Cyclopean
stone-work of old Etruscan and Roman walls. But the world soon adopts a
higher way, not arranging the plan to suit the stones, but shaping the
stones to fit the work, especially using rectangular blocks of stone to
lay down in regular courses of masonry. In ancient Egypt, the masons
hewed and smoothed even granite and porphyry to a finish which is envied
by the architects of our own day, and the pyramids of Gizeh are as
wonderful for the fine masonry of their slopes, chambers, and passages,
as for their prodigious size. Our modern notion of a stone building is
that the blocks of stone are to be fixed together with a layer of mortar
to bind them, but in the old and beautiful architecture of Egypt and
Greece the faced stone blocks lie on one another, having no cement to
hold them, and needing none. Clamps of metal were used when required to
hold the stones together. Cement or mortar (so called from the mortar or
trough in which it was mixed) was also well known in the ancient world.
The Roman builders not only used the common lime-and-sand mortar, which
hardens by absorbing carbonic acid from the air, but they also knew how
by adding volcanic ash or pozzolana to make a water-resisting cement,
whence the name of “Roman cement” given to a composition used by our
masons. Mention has been already made of the practice of coating the
sides of the savage bough-hut with clay. The ancient people who built
their settlements on piles out in the Swiss lakes used to do this, as is
proved by bits of the clay coating which were accidentally baked when the
huts were burnt down, and fell into the water, where they may still be
found, showing the impressions of the long-perished reed cabins on which
the moist clay was plastered. We still have something of the kind in what
cottage-builders call “wattle and daub.” One also sees now and then in
an English country lane a cottage or cowhouse which is a relic of another
sort of primitive architecture, its walls being simply built of “cob”,
that is, clay mixed with straw. Such hut-walls of clay or mud are very
usual in dry climates such as Egypt, where they are cheaper and better
than timber. This being so, there is no difficulty in understanding how
sun-dried bricks came into use, these being simply convenient blocks
of the same mud or loam mixed with straw which was used to build the
cottage walls. These sun-dried bricks were used in the East from high
antiquity. Some of the Egyptian pyramids still standing are built of
them, and the pictures show how the clay was tempered and the large
bricks formed in wooden moulds much as in modern brickfields. With these
the architects of Nineveh built the palace walls ten or fifteen feet
thick, which were panelled with the slabs of sculptured alabaster. For
such sun-dried bricks, clay and water form a sufficient cement. Building
with mud-bricks, which indeed suits the climate well, goes on in these
countries as of old. They were used also in America, and to this day the
traveller in such districts as Mexico will often find himself lodged
in a house built of them. The sun-dried brick is there called _adobe_,
a word which is actually their ancient Egyptian name _tob_, which when
adopted into Arabic became with the article, _at-tob_, and thence was
adopted into Spanish as _adobe_. Baked bricks seem to have been a later
invention, easy enough to nations who baked earthen pots, but only wanted
in more rainy climates. Thus the Romans, whom mere mud-bricks would not
have suited, carried to great perfection the making of kiln-burnt bricks
and tiles.
For ordinary house-building, we now have recourse to the mason or
bricklayer to build the walls, and tiles or slates are an improvement on
the old thatch. But we so far keep to the old wooden architecture, that
the floors and the timbering of the roof are still wood-work. For tombs
and temples, however, built to last for ages, means were early wanted of
roofing over spaces with the bricks or stones themselves without trusting
to wooden beams. There are two modes of doing this, the false arch and
the real arch, which are both ancient. The false arch is an arrangement
which would occur to any builder, in fact it is what children make in
building with wooden bricks, when they set them overlapping more and
more till the top ones come near enough for one brick to cover the gap.
Passages and chambers roofed in like this with projecting blocks of
stone may be seen in the pyramids of Egypt, in ancient tombs of Greece
and Italy, in the ruined palaces of Central America; and thus are built
the domes of the Jain temples in India. It does not follow that the
architects were ignorant of the real arch; they may have objected to it
from its tendency to thrust the walls out. It is not known exactly how
and when the arch was invented, but the idea might present itself even in
roofing over doorways with rough stones. In the tombs of ancient Egypt
real arches are to be seen, constructed in mud-bricks, or later in stone,
by architects who quite understood the principle. Yet though the arch
was known in what we call ancient times, it was not at once accepted by
the world. It is remarkable that the Greek architects of the classic
period never took to it. It was left to the Romans, who applied it with
admirable skill, and from whose vaulted roofs, bridges, and domes, those
of the mediæval and modern world are derived.
In thus looking over the architecture of the world, we see that its
origins lie too far back for history to record its beginning and earliest
progress. Still there is reason to believe that, in architecture as in
other arts, man began with the simple and easy before he came on to the
complex and difficult. There are many signs of stone architecture having
grown out of an earlier wooden architecture. Thus on looking at the
Lykian tombs in the entrance-hall of the British Museum, it will be seen
that though they are of hewn stone, their forms are copied from wooden
beams and joists, so that the mason shows by his very patterns that he
has taken the place of an earlier carpenter. Even in the early stone-work
of Egypt, traces of wooden forms are to be seen. In India there are stone
buildings whose columns and architraves are not less plainly copied from
wooden posts, and horizontal beams resting on them. It is possible that
when men first took to setting up stone columns and supporting stone
blocks upon them, this idea may have come into their minds from the
wooden posts and beams they had been used to. But when it is said, as it
often has been, that the porticos of Greek temples are copies in stone of
older wooden structures, practical architects object that the Parthenon
is not really like carpenter’s work. Indeed it is known that the Greeks
did not invent their own column-architecture, but taking the idea of it
from what they saw in Egypt and other countries, carried it out according
to their own genius.
After dwellings, we come to examine clothing. It has first to be noticed
that some low tribes, especially in the tropical forests of South
America, have been found by travellers living quite naked. But even
among the rudest of our race, and in hot districts where clothing is
of least practical use, something is generally worn, either from ideas
of decency or for ornament. Where little or no clothing is worn, it is
common to paint the body. The Andaman islanders, who plaster themselves
with a mixture of lard and coloured earth, have a practical reason
for so doing, this coat of paint protecting their skin from heat and
mosquitos; but they go off into love of display when they proceed to draw
lines on the paint with their fingers, or when a dandy will colour one
side of his face red, and the other olive-green, and make an ornamental
border-line where the two colours meet down his chest and stomach. Among
the relics of the ancient cave-men of Europe are hollowed stones, which
were their primitive mortars for grinding the ochre and other colours for
painting themselves. Indeed, few habits mark the lower stages of human
life so well as the delight in body-patterns of bold spots and stripes
in striking colours, familiar to us in pictures of Australians dancing
at a corroboree, or Americans working themselves up to frenzy in the
scalp-dance. The primitive sign of mourning also makes its appearance
where savage mourners blacken (or whiten) themselves over. In the higher
civilization, faded beauties may still make a poor attempt to revive
youthful bloom with touches of red and white. But the ancient war-paint
is now looked down on as a sign of utter barbarism; so much so that the
ancient Britons, though a nation of considerable civilization, have been
treated by many historians as mere savages because they kept up this
rude practice, as Cæsar says, staining themselves blue with woad, and so
being of horrider aspect in war. Among ourselves the guise which was so
terrific in the Red Indian warrior has come down to make the circus-clown
a pattern of folly. It is very likely that his paint-striped face may
represent a fashion come down from the ancient times when paint was
worn by the barbarians of Europe, much as in Japan actors paint their
faces with bright streaks of red, doubtless keeping up what was once an
ordinary decoration. When the skin is tattooed, the chief purpose of
this is no doubt beauty, as where the New Zealander had himself covered
with patterns of curved lines such as he would adorn his club or his
canoe with; it was considered shameful for a woman not to have her mouth
tattooed, for people would say with disgust “she has red lips.” Tattooing
prevails as widely among the lower races of the world as painting, and
the fashionable designs range from a few blue lines on the face or
arms, up to the flower-patterns with which the skins of the Formosans
are covered like damask. Where the art is carried to perfection as in
Polynesia, the skin is punctured, and the charcoal-colour introduced,
by tapping rows of little prickers. But a rougher mode is common, as in
Australia or Africa, where gashes are made and wood-ashes rubbed in so
that the wound heals in a knob or a ridge. Marks on the skin often serve
other purposes than ornament, as in Africa, where a long scar on a man’s
thigh may mean that he has done valiantly in battle, or the tribe or
nation a negro belongs to may be indicated by his mark, for instance, a
pair of long cuts down both cheeks, or a row of raised pimples down his
forehead to the tip of his nose. Higher up in civilization, tattooing
still lasts on, as where Arab women will slightly touch up their faces,
arms, or ankles with the needle, and our sailors amuse themselves with
having an anchor or a ship in full sail done with gunpowder on their
arms, but in this last case the original purpose is lost, for the picture
is hidden under the sleeve. Naturally, as clothing comes more and more to
cover the body, the primitive skin-decorations cease, for what is the use
of adorning oneself out of sight?
The head is frequently cropped or shaved close as a sign of mourning.
Some tribes thus go bald always, like the Andaman islanders; or let the
hair grow in tonsure-fashion in a ring round the shaved crown, like the
Coroado (that is, “crowned”) Indians of Brazil; or wear a shaven head
with a long scalp-lock or pigtail like the North American Indians, or the
Manchus of Tartary, from whom the modern Chinese have adopted this habit.
A curious mode of twisting the hair with strips of bark into hundreds of
long thin ringlets is seen in the portraits of natives of Lepers’ Island,
Fig. 66.
[Illustration: FIG. 66.—Natives of Lepers’ Island (New Hebrides.)]
Various tribes grind their front teeth to points, or cut them away in
angular patterns, so that in Africa and elsewhere a man’s tribe is often
known by the cut of his teeth. Long finger-nails are noticed even among
ourselves as showing that the owner does no manual labour, and in China
and neighbouring countries they are allowed to grow to a monstrous length
as a symbol of nobility, ladies wearing silver cases to protect them, or
at least as a pretence that they are there (see the portraits of Siamese
actresses in royal dress, Fig. 32). Or the nails may be let to grow as a
sign that the wearer leads a religious life, and does no worldly work, as
in the accompanying figure of the hand of a Chinese ascetic, Fig. 67.
As any nation’s idea of beauty is apt to be according to the type of
their own race, they like to see their distinctive features exaggerated.
Looking at a Hottentot face, Fig. 12 _c_, one understands why the mothers
would squeeze the babies’ snub noses yet further in, while in ancient
times a little Persian prince would have a bold aquiline nose shaped
for him, to come like Fig. 11 _b_. In all quarters of the globe is
found the custom of compressing infants’ heads by bandages and pads to
make the little plastic skull grow to an approved shape. But as to what
that shape ought to be, tastes differ extremely. In the Columbia River
district, some Flathead tribes will so flatten out the forehead that
their front faces look like a pear with the large end uppermost, while
neighbouring tribes press in the upper part of the skull so that their
faces look like the pear with the small end up. Hippokrates, the ancient
physician, mentions the artificially deformed skulls of the Makrokephali
or “long-heads” of the Black Sea district. The genuine Turkish skull is
of the broad Tatar form, while the nations of Greece and Asia Minor have
oval skulls, which gives the reason why at Constantinople it became the
fashion to mould the babies’ skulls round, so that they grew up with the
broad head of the conquering race. Relics of such barbarism linger on in
the midst of civilization, and not long ago a French physician surprised
the world by the fact that nurses in Normandy were still giving the
children’s heads a sugar-loaf shape by bandages and a tight cap, while in
Brittany they preferred to press it round. No doubt they are doing so to
this day.
[Illustration: FIG. 67.—Hand of Chinese ascetic.]
[Illustration: FIG. 68.—Botocudo woman with lip- and ear-ornaments.]
The propensity to beautify the body with ornaments belongs to human
nature as low down as we can follow it. In South America the naked
people were adorned with rings on legs and arms, and one tribe had as
their only apparel a macaw’s feather stuck in a hole at each corner of
their mouths, and strings of shells hanging from their noses, ears, and
under-lips. This latter case is a good example of the ornaments being
fastened into the body, which is pierced or cut to receive them. Various
tribes wear labrets or lip-ornaments, some gradually enlarging the hole
through the under-lip till it will take a wooden plug two or three inches
across, as in the portrait (Fig. 68) of a woman of the Botocudos, a
Brazilian tribe who owe their name to this labret, which the Portuguese
compared to a _botoque_ or bung. Ear-ornaments, as the figure shows,
are put in the same way in the lobe of the ear, which they stretch so
that when the disc of wood is taken out it falls in a loop and even
reaches the shoulder. Thus it is possible that there may be some truth
in the favourite wonder-tale of the old geographers, about the tribes
whose great ears reached down to their shoulders, though the story had
to be stretched a good deal farther when it was declared that they lay
down on one ear and covered themselves with the other for a blanket.
The great interest to us in these savage ornaments is in the tendency
of higher civilization to give them up. In Persia one still finds the
nose-ring through one side of a woman’s nostril, but European taste would
be shocked by this, though it allows the ear to be pierced to carry
an ear-ring. As to ornaments which are merely put on, they are mostly
feathers, flowers, or trinkets worn in the hair, or strung-ornaments or
rings on the neck, arms, and legs. In what remote times man had begun to
take pleasure in such decorations may be seen by the periwinkle-shells
bored for stringing found in the cave of Cro-Magnon, which no doubt made
necklaces and bracelets for the girls of the mammoth-period. In the
modern world necklaces and bracelets remain in unchanged use, though
anklets, such as the bangles of the Hindu dancing-girl, have of course
disappeared from the costume of civilized wearers of shoes and stockings.
It would not suit our customs to keep an affectionate memory of dead
relatives by wearing their finger and toe bones strung as beads, as the
Andaman women do, but our ladies keep in fashion barbaric necklaces of
such things as shells, seeds, tigers’ claws, and especially polished
stones. The wearing of shining stones as ornaments lasts on, whether
they have come to be precious pearls or rubies, or glass beads which
are imitation stones. Where metal becomes known it at once comes into
use for ornament, and this reaches its height where amused travellers
describe some Dayak girl with her arms sheathed in a coil of stout
brass wire, or some African belle whose great copper rings on her limbs
get so hot in the sun that an attendant carries a water-pot to sluice
them down now and then. To see gold jewelry of the highest order, the
student should examine that of the ancients, such as the Egyptian,
Greek, and Etruscan in the British Museum, and that of mediæval Europe.
The art seems now to have passed its prime, and become a manufacture,
of which the best products are imitations from the antique. The cutting
of precious stones such as diamonds into facets is, however, a modern
art. As to finger-rings, if their use arose out of the signet-rings of
Egypt and Babylon, then the few which are still engraved as seals keep up
the original idea, while those which only carry pearls or diamonds have
turned into mere ornaments.
To come now to clothing proper. The man who wants a garment gets it in
the simplest way when he takes the covering off a tree or a beast, and
puts it on himself. The bark of trees provides clothes for rude races
in many districts, as for instance in the curious use which natives
of the Brazilian forests have long made of the so-called “shirt-tree”
(lecythis). A man cuts a four or five feet length of the trunk, or a
large branch, and gets the bark off in an entire tube, which he has
then only to soak and beat soft and to cut slits for armholes, to be
able to slip it on as a ready-made shirt; or a short length will make a
woman’s skirt. The wearing of bark has sometimes been kept up as a sign
of primitive simplicity. Thus in India it is written in the laws of Manu
that when the grey-haired Brahman retires into the forest to end his days
in religious meditation, he shall wear a skin or a garment of bark. A
ruder people, the Kayans of Borneo, while in common life they like the
smart foreign stuffs of the trader, when they go into mourning throw them
off and return to the rude native garment of bark-cloth. In Polynesia the
manufacture of _tapa_ from the bark of the paper-mulberry was carried to
great perfection, the women beating it out with grooved clubs into a sort
of vegetable felt, and ornamenting it with coloured patterns stamped
on. The people were delighted with the white paper of the Europeans,
and dressed themselves in it as a fine variety of tapa, till they found
that the first shower of rain spoilt it. Leaves, also, are made into
aprons or skirts which clothe various rude tribes. Not only are there
“leaf-wearers” in India, but at a yearly festival in Madras the whole
low-caste population cast off their ordinary clothing, and put on aprons
of leafy twigs.
The skin garments worn by the savages of the ancient world have rotted
away these many thousand years, but we may see how generally they used to
be worn, by the vast numbers of skin-dressing implements of sharp stone
(see Fig. 54, _c_), found in the ground. Till lately the Patagonians,
when they came on their journeys to a place where suitable flint or
obsidian was to be found, would load themselves with a supply of lumps
to chip into these primitive currier’s scrapers. Savages, that their fur
robes or deer-skin shirts should not dry stiff, know how to dress the
leather skilfully by such processes as rubbing in fat or marrow, and
suppling with the hands; they also smoke it, to keep. Thus the North
Americans know how to prepare deer-skin for garments into something like
what we call chamois leather. But it hardly seems as though the lower
races had taught themselves the process of actual tanning with bark or
galls, where the tannic acid forms in the substance of the skin insoluble
compounds which resist change for ages, so that the beautiful cut and
embossed work in tanned leather from ancient Egypt may still be seen
perfectly preserved in our museums. In such riding countries as Mexico,
suits of leather are still worn, while in Europe the buff jerkin and
the huntsman’s buckskins are disappearing; but it is still everywhere
acknowledged that there is nothing like leather for covering the feet. In
wearing furs, our height of luxury keeps curiously close to the savage
fashion of the primitive world.
Plaiting and matting are arts of such simplicity that they are known to
savages. In hot countries matting is convenient for dress, as when South
Sea Islanders make gowns of plaited grass, and the old art still provides
the civilized world with hats and bonnets of straw or chip. Next, if we
pull a scrap of woven cloth to pieces, we see that it is in fact a piece
of matting done with thread. Therefore, to understand weaving, we have to
begin with the making of string or thread. All mankind can twist string,
but some tribes do it in a far lower way than we are accustomed to. They
take vegetable fibre, wool or hair, and twist it by rolling between their
flat palms, or with one hand on the thigh. It is quite worth the reader’s
while to try to imitate this process, by twisting two strands of tow,
and then rolling these into one with the reverse movement. At any rate
he will find how much practice he would take to do it as cleverly as
the Australians when they have the women’s hair cut to furnish a supply
of fishing-lines, or the New Zealanders when they run out a handful
of native flax by inches into a neat and perfect cord. But the higher
nations use a mechanical contrivance, the spindle, for thread-making,
and the question is how this came to be invented. Fig. 69 shows what may
have happened. At _a_ is figured a cross-stick, forming a simple reel or
winder, on which the Australians wind their hair-string just mentioned.
Now if it had occurred to one of these savages to secure his thread by
drawing it into a split at the end of the stick, he might have seen that
by giving the hanging reel a twirl he could make it twist a new strand
for him much faster than he could do between his hands. The Australian
never saw how to do this. But looking at _b_ in the figure, which
represents an ancient Egyptian woman spinning, it is evident that such a
spindle as she is working with may have been invented by turning a mere
reel to this new use. Such spindles were known over the ancient civilized
world, and among the commonest objects dug up near old dwellings are the
spindle-whorls of stone or terra-cotta, like great buttons, which with
a stick through the middle formed the whole simple implement. Spindles
may still be seen in the hands of peasant women in Italy or Switzerland.
The spinning-wheel of the middle ages was a little machine to drive a
spindle, and the spinning-frames in factories show the ancient instrument
worked with still more modern improvements, a hundred spindles in a row
being driven rapidly by steam-power, and all tended by a single operative.
[Illustration: FIG. 69.—_a_, Australian winder for hand-twisted cord;
_b_, Egyptian woman spinning with the spindle.]
[Illustration: FIG. 70.—Girl weaving. (From an Aztec picture.)]
The next point is how people provided with thread or yarn taught
themselves to weave it into cloth. As has just been said, cloth is a sort
of matting made with threads, but as these cannot be held stiff like
rushes, a number of them may be stretched in a frame to form a warp,
and then the cross-thread or woof worked in and out with the fingers,
or on a stick, as the Mexican girl is doing in Fig. 70. This toilsome
method still suits the difficult patterns of the tapestry-weaver. But
time-saving contrivances were invented very early. The ancient Egyptian
pictures already show the alternate threads of the warp being lifted by
cross-bars, so as to allow the woof-thread carried by a shuttle to be
sent right across the piece of cloth at one throw. The looms of classic
Greece and Rome were much the same, and little improvement was made in
the machine during the middle ages. Indeed in out-of-the-way places such
as the Hebrides, the tourist may still see the old cottage-loom which,
except in being horizontal so that the weaver sits to it instead of
standing, hardly differs from the loom at which Penelope may be imagined
weaving the famous shroud that she undid at night. Only about a century
ago improvement began again, when the “flying shuttle” was invented,
which instead of being thrown by hand, was driven swiftly across by a
pair of levers or artificial arms. Of late years this improved loom has
passed into the power-loom, the steam-engine now doing the hard labour
instead of the weaver’s hands and feet. The ingenious device of the
Jacquard loom with its perforated cards arranging the threads, has made
it possible to weave even landscapes and portraits.
The primitive _tailor_ or “cutter” (_tailleur_) had not only to cut his
skin or bark into shape, but to join pieces by means of sinew or thread.
This art of sewing makes its appearance among savages, and is seen in
its rudest form among the Fuegians who pierce their guanaco-skins with
a pointed bone, push the thread through, and make a tie at each hole.
Among tribes who have only such bone awls, or stiff thorns, to work
with, sewing cannot get beyond the shoemaker’s fashion of first making a
row of holes and then pushing and pulling the thread through. But bone
needles with eyes are found in the reindeer-caves of France, so that
possibly the seamstresses of the mammoth-period may already have known
how to stitch and embroider their soft skins. When the metal-period
began, bronze needles came into use such as are to be seen in museums,
and in modern times the fine steel needles have become an example how
finish and cheapness may be gained by division of labour, one set of
workpeople being entirely occupied in grinding the points, another in
drilling the eyes, and so on. But the sewing-needle is still in principle
that of the ancient world, and hand-sewing, after holding its place for
thousands of years, has suddenly had to compete with the work of the
new sewing-machine, which runs its more rapid seams in a mechanically
different way.
Next, as to the shape of garments. If we knew of no costume but what we
commonly wear now, we might think it more a product of mere fancy than it
really is. But on looking carefully at the dresses of various nations,
it is seen that most garments are variations of a few principal kinds,
each made for a particular purpose in clothing the body. The simplest
and no doubt earliest garments are wraps wound or hung on the body, and
by noticing how these are worn it may be guessed how they led to the
later use of garments fitted to the wearer’s shape. To begin with the
simplest mantles, a skin or blanket with a hole through the middle forms
a ready-made garment of the poncho kind. When one throws a rug or blanket
over one’s shoulders, it becomes a garment which requires fastening in
front, or on one shoulder, to leave the arm free. This fastening may be
done with a thorn or bone pin, the primitive _brooch_, that is, “skewer”
(French _broche_); we now use the word brooch to mean the more civilized
metal pin with a safety-clasp, the Latin _fibula_ or “fixer.” Now if
one stands thus draped in a blanket or sheet, one has only to raise the
arms to show how naturally sleeves came to be made by sewing together
under the arms. Next, putting the blanket over the head and holding it
under the chin, it is seen how the part over the head will make a hood,
which can be thrown back when not wanted. When it was found convenient
to make the hood separate, there arose various kinds of head-covering,
whose baggy shape often shows their origin, for instance the pointed
“fool’s-cap.” When the mantle thrown over the shoulders is short, it
forms the _cape_ or _cope_; when long, it becomes the _cloak_, which owes
its name to its likeness to a bell (French _cloche_). For convenience,
many varieties of the mantle are cut into shape, as for instance the toga
in which the ancient Roman draped himself was rounded off. But ever since
the invention of weaving, certain garments have been worn just as they
came from the loom, such as the Scotch plaid, and that ancient Eastern
wrapper which we still know by its Persian name of _shawl_ (_shâl_). Such
woven garments are apt to keep a mark of their origin in the fringe,
which in its original form is the ends of the warp-threads left on by
the weaver, and when these threads are tied together in bundles they give
rise to tassels. Another great group of garments are tunics, seen in a
simple form in the chiton of ancient Greek female dress, which has been
compared to a linen sack open at both ends, and was held up by a brooch
on each shoulder, leaving openings for the arms. The tunic, closed at
the shoulders and generally provided with sleeves, is the most universal
of civilized garments, whether worn hanging loose like a shirt, or drawn
in at the waist by a girdle or belt. In its various forms it is seen as
the tunic of the Roman legionary and the “red shirt” of the Garibaldian
volunteer, the coat of the mediæval noble, the smock-frock of the English
peasant, the blouse of the French workman, and lastly, it led to our
modern coats and waistcoats, which are tunics made to open in front and
close with buttons. One of the great steps in personal cleanliness and
therefore in culture made by our forefathers, was the adoption of a linen
tunic next the skin, the “short” garment, or _shirt_. Again, a piece of
cloth wrapped round the body and held up by a girdle forms the skirt or
kilt, and the way in which Eastern women fasten their skirts together
between the feet for convenience of walking, shows how trousers were
invented. Many ancient nations wore trousers, as the Sarmatians, whose
modern-looking costume may be seen on Trajan’s column, and the Gauls and
Britons, so that it is a mistake to call the present Highland costume the
“garb of old Gaul.” The classic Greeks and Romans looked on the _braccæ_
or _breeches_ as belonging to barbarism, but their opinion has not been
accepted by the civilized world.
These remarks may lead readers to look attentively into books of costume,
which indeed are full of curious illustrations of the way in which
things are not invented outright by mere fancy, but come by gradual
alterations of what was already there. To account for our present absurd
“chimney-pot” hat, we must see how it came by successive changes from the
conical Puritan hat and the slouched Stuart hat, and these again from
earlier forms. The sense of the hat-band must be found in its once having
been a real cord to draw in the mere round piece of felt which was the
primitive hat; and to understand why our hat is covered with silk nap, it
must be remembered that this is an imitation of the earlier beaver-fur
hat, which would stand rain. Even the now useless seams and buttons on
modern clothes (see page 15) are bits of past history.
This chapter may be concluded with an account of boats and ships. He who
first, laying hold of a floating bough, found it would bear him up in the
water, had made a beginning in navigation. Naturally, history has kept
no record of the origin of such an art. Yet the rudest forms of floats,
rafts, and boats, may still be seen in use among savages, and even the
civilized traveller coming to a stream or lake may be glad to make shift
with a log or a bundle of bulrushes to help him across, and carry his
gun and clothes over dry. Comparing these rough-and-ready means with the
contrivances made with skill and care for permanent use, a fair idea may
be had of the stages through which the shipwrights’ art grew up.
The mere float comes lowest, as where a South Sea Island child goes
into the water with an unhusked coco-nut to hold on by; or a Hottentot
will swim his goats across the river, supporting his body by sprawling
on one end of a drift-log of willow, which he calls his “wooden-horse.”
Australians have been known to come out to our ships sitting astride
logs pointed at the ends, and paddling with their hands, while native
fishermen of California will sit on a bundle of rushes tied up in the
shape of a sailor’s hammock. Rude as these are, they at any rate show
that the makers have noticed the advantage which the craft with a sharp
bow has over the blunt-ended log in getting through the water. In all
quarters of the globe, men improve on the float by making it hollow for
buoyancy; it thus becomes a boat. One way of doing this is to scoop out
a log. Any one who happens to have been up country in America may have
paddled himself in such a “dug-out” across a pond or river; and after
experience of the care required to keep a cylinder from rolling over in
the water, he will know how great an improvement it was in boat-building
when a keel was put on to steady the craft. To savages with their stone
hatchets, the hollowing out of a log is a laborious business when the
wood is of a hard kind, and they are apt to use fire to help them,
setting the tree-trunk alight along the proper line and hacking away
the burning wood. Columbus was struck with the size of such vessels
made by the natives of the West Indies, mentioning in his letters many
canoes of solid wood, “multas scaphas solidi ligni,” some so large as
to hold seventy to eighty rowers. The Spaniards adopted their Haitian
name _canoa_, whence our _canoe_. Yet this _dug-out_, or _monoxyle_
(“one-tree”), to use its Greek name, was well known in other barbaric
countries, and had been common in Europe in ages before history, as may
be seen by the specimens in museums, preserved by the peat or sand in
which they were found imbedded. Even the Latin word _scapha_, used above,
carries the record of this early boat-building; it is Greek _skaphē_,
which corresponds so exactly in meaning to the term “dug-out,” as to be
an evident relic of the time when boats were really scooped out of solid
trunks; related to these words are English _skiff_ and _ship_, so that
the line of connexion in names runs through from first to last. Another
very simple way of making a boat is that seen among the Australians,
where a man will strip a sheet of bark off the stringy-bark tree, tie
it together at the ends, and paddle off in this improvised bark-canoe.
If, however, it is to be used more than once, he sews the ends together,
and puts in stretchers or cross-pieces of wood to keep it in shape. Thus
appears the bark-canoe, not unknown in Asia and Africa, and attaining
in North America its greatest perfection, with its framework of cedar
and sheathing of sheets of birch-bark sewed together with fibrous
cedar-roots. Such canoes are still in full use in districts like the
Hudson’s Bay territory, being well suited to a broken navigation where
rapids make it needful to carry boat and cargo overland, or a “portage”
has to be made from one river to another. The principle of skin-canoes
is much the same, using hide for bark. North American Indians crossing
rivers have been known to turn the skins of their tents into vessels by
means of a few twigs to keep them stretched. Scarcely above this are
the round skin-covered boats of boughs of Mesopotamia, and the portable
coracles of the ancient Britons; on the Severn and the Shannon fishermen
still go down to the river carrying on their backs their coracles, now
made of tarred canvas on a frame, but modelled on the ancient type. The
Esquimaux kayak has its framework of bone or drift-wood on which are
stretched the seal-skins which convert it into a water-tight life-buoy,
in which the skin-clad paddler can even turn over sideways and bring
his boat up right on the other side. Our modern so-called canoes are
imitations of this in wood.
Next, when the barbaric shipwright comes to improving a dug-out canoe
by sewing or lacing on a strip of thin board as a gunwale, or making
his whole boat by sewing thin boards together over the ribs, instead
of skins or sheets of bark, he brings his vessel a stage nearer to our
boats. From Africa across to the Malay Archipelago, such sewn ships used
to be, and often still are, the ordinary native craft. The South Sea
Island canoes, thus laced together with sinnet or coco-nut fibre braid so
neatly that the joints hardly show, are marvels of barbaric carpentry.
In the gulf of Oman, men used to go across to the coco-nut islands with
their tools, cut down a few palms, make the wood into planks, sew these
together with cord made from the bark, make sails of the leaves, load the
new-made ships with the nuts, and set sail.
Before coming to the ships of civilized nations, let us look back for a
moment to the ruder floats. Two or three logs fastened together form a
raft, which though clumsy to move has the advantage of not upsetting,
and carrying a heavy load. At the time of the discovery of Peru, the
Spaniards were amazed to meet with a native raft out in the ocean, and
with a sail set. The rafts which bring goods down the Euphrates and
Tigris are buoyed with blown sheepskins; at the end of the voyage the
raft is broken up and the wood sold, so that only the empty skins have
to go back to serve another time. With still more perfect economy, the
rafts down the Nile are buoyed with earthen pots for sale in the bazar,
so that nothing goes back. Timber-rafts, like those on the Rhine, are
well arranged for merely floating down stream. But when a raft has to be
driven through the water by oars or sails, its resistance is excessive,
and it has occurred to the Fijians and other islanders that a raft
formed by two parallel logs united by cross-poles and carrying a raised
platform, would go more easily. Looking at this simple contrivance,
it has been reasonably thought that it led up to the invention of the
outrigger canoe, known in ancient Europe, and now prevailing in the
Pacific and as far as Ceylon. One of the two logs is now represented by
the canoe, the second remaining as the outrigger log, fastened to the
ends of the two projecting poles, so as to steady the whole in rough
weather. Or indeed the two logs may both become canoes, and the platform
be retained; thus we have the Polynesian double-canoe, whose principle
has been lately turned to account in the double-steamboat to smooth the
passage between Dover and Calais.
Next, as to the ways by which boats are propelled through the water.
The origin of rowing is plainly shown by the Australian straddling his
pointed log and paddling with his hands, or by the fisherman of the Upper
Nile propelling with his feet the bundle of stalks he sits astride on.
The primitive wooden paddle, imitating the form and doing the work of the
flat hand or foot, is well known to savages, who mostly use the single
paddle with a blade or shovel end; the double-ended paddle, such as our
canoeists have borrowed from the Esquimaux, is a peculiar improved form.
The paddle used free-handed to dig or sweep at the water, is best suited
to the narrow bark-canoe or hollowed trunk, but for larger craft it is
a rude contrivance as compared with the civilized oar, which is a lever
pulled against a fulcrum so as to use more of the rower’s force, and in
a steadier pull. The difference between barbaric and civilized knowledge
of mechanical principles, is well seen by comparing a large South Sea
Island canoe with twenty paddlers shovelling the water, to one of our
eight-oared launches. Of sails, perhaps the simplest idea is to be seen
in Catlin’s sketch of North American Indians standing up each in his
canoe, holding up his blanket with outstretched arms with its lower end
tied to his leg, and so going before the wind. The rudest regular sail
used anywhere is a mat or cloth held up by two sticks as stays at the
upper corners and made fast below, or supported by an upright pole and
cross-piece, the primitive mast and yard. It is so common for the lower
tribes of men never to sail their boats, that it is difficult to imagine
that their ancestors ever knew how. Surely they would have kept it up,
for the art of saving so much labour with so little pains would not
easily have fallen out of mind. It seems more likely that the invention
of the sailing vessel belongs to a period when civilization was far
advanced. Yet this period was very ancient.
[Illustration: FIG. 71.—Ancient Nile-boat, from wall-painting, Thebes.]
Up to this point, in making out how the simpler kinds of boats came into
existence, history gives no help. Not only does their origin mostly
lie beyond record, but by the time we come fairly into history we find
the ancient nations knowing how to build vessels of more advanced
order, framed with keel and ribs, and sheathed with nailed planks, in
fact the direct predecessors of our own ships. Egypt, or somewhere
else in that Old World region of ancient culture, may have been the
original centre whence the higher shipwrights’ craft spread over the
world. It is instructive to study the ancient Egyptian vessel (Fig. 71)
depicted on the wall of a Theban tomb, and to see how far it already
has in a rudimentary state the parts which we recognise as belonging
to the fully-developed ship. As was common, it was a combination of
rowing-galley and sailing-ship. The rowers sit on cross benches, pulling
at the oars which pass through loops, while at the stern is worked the
great steering-oar which is the ancestor of our _rudder_ (this used to be
merely an oar, which its name originally meant, like _ruder_ in German).
There is a mast held up by stays and carrying yards, with ropes rigged
to hoist them and to furl the sail. The forecastle and poop are already
represented by raised structures on the deck. In the Egyptian pictures of
war-ships it is seen how these served as stations for the archers, while
the fighting-men were also protected behind a bulwark, and there is even
the “crow’s nest” on the top of the mast serving as a place for slingers
to hurl stones from at the enemy, from which comes our “mast-head.”
Comparing with the Egyptian vessels the ancient galleys and ships of the
Mediterranean, whether Phœnician, Greek, or Roman, it is impossible to
think these can have come into existence by separate lines of invention;
the family likeness among them is too strong. Even farther off, the
likeness of the craft still used in the Ganges to the ancient Nile-boats
is surprising, and the eye of Osiris painted on the Egyptian funeral
bark that carried the dead across the lake to the western burial-place,
may perhaps have first suggested the painting of eyes as ornaments on
the bows of boats, from the barks in Valetta harbour in the west to the
junks of Canton in the east. In following the course of development
from the ancient to the modern ship, we notice that from time to time
new appliances come in, as metal sheathing to protect the planks from
the boring teredo, the iron fluked anchor instead of a great stone,
the capstan for hauling, &c. More masts and spars now served to carry
more sails, and tier above tier of rowers impelled the classic bireme
and trireme. The war-galley lasted on into our own time in the Venetian
navy, kept in use in spite of its bad sea-going quality, for its power
of dashing upon sailing-vessels helpless in a calm. The galley-slaves
who laboured at the huge oars were captives or criminals, and though
the French galleys no longer remain for penal servitude, the term
_galérien_ or galley-slave still means a convict. The vast improvement of
European sailing-vessels in the middle ages is in great measure due to
an invention learnt from the far east—the mariner’s compass. Ships, now
able to steer their courses on long voyages out of sight of land, were
improved in build and rigging, while the men-of-war with several decks
armed with tiers of cannon became floating castles. Lastly, during the
present century, steam-power has been applied to propel the ship from
within, the paddle-wheel or screw in fact taking the place of the old
banks of oars, and the changeable wind-power being now only turned to
account as an occasional aid and means of saving fuel. It is needless to
describe the changes which modern armour-plating and huge guns have made
in the construction of ships of war, but even these still show plainly
enough how they were formed by successive alterations from the primitive
canoe.