lOO 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



history of the carrier's art ; and woman " was primarily the only 

 creature that transformed Nature to produce an apparatus for 

 the carrying of burdens. . . . Many other industries were created, 

 stimulated, and modified by this carrying trade. The member of 

 pristine society who went to the fields to gather nuts and seeds 

 and fruit must necessarily have brought them home. Hence the 

 burden-bearer must be a basket-maker, and the pack-woman is a 

 patron of husbandry and of the textile art. Clay and fuel must 

 be brought to make pottery, and pottery, in turn, has to be shaped 

 to carry water and food ; so the potter and the carrier are sisters. 

 It can not fail to be interesting to know how ingeniously these 



early passenger cars were con- 

 structed." The builders were 

 strictly scientific in their meth- 

 ods, in that they ingeniously 

 adapted structure to function and 

 environment. To the Eskimo 

 mother the great consideration 

 is to protect the child from the 

 cold. " So she makes a baby car- 

 riage of her hood, and her off- 

 spring, when she takes it abroad 

 or when she is on a journey, is 

 safely ensconced between the soft 

 fur and the mother's warm neck. 

 All the American tribes used a 

 papoose frame of some sort." 

 The distinguishing marks of this 

 apparatus were the back, the 

 sides, the lashing, the bed, the 

 pillow, the covering, the awning, 

 the decoration. All these were 

 present in some form, but in each stock, and especially in each 

 natural-history region, there were just such variations as were 

 necessary and proper. In Canada the cradle was made of birch 

 bark and the bed was of the finest fur. In the coast region of 

 British Columbia and southward little arklike troughs were ex- 

 cavated as the boats were, and beds and pillows and wrappings of 

 the finest shredded cedar bark took the place of furs. Farther 

 south still, as the climate became milder, the ark gave place to a 

 little rack or gridiron of osier, sumac, or reed, and the face of the 

 child was shaded from the sun by a delicate awning. Across the 

 Rocky Mountains, in the land of the buffalo, the papoose frame 

 looks like a great shoe lashed to an inverted trellis or ladder, and 

 nowadays the whole surface is covered with embroidered bead- 

 work. It matters not where we travel within the limits assigned 



Fig. 10. The Knapsack in Woman's 

 Work German Peasant Woman. 



