432 ON DRAUGHT 



Tlie principle appears to us so simple as to have been necessarily the re- 

 sult of pure invention, almost inspiration ; while, at the same time, it is so 

 exceedingly effective and perfect, as hardly to admit of improvement. 



The great antiquity of wheeled-carriages or chariots precludes all hopes 

 of discovering their origin. About fifteen hundred years before the Chris- 

 tian era they appear to have been in very common use amongst the Egyp- 

 tians in their warfare. Pharaoh despatched six hundred chosen chariots 

 in pursuit of the If raelites, immediately that he was informed of their 

 escape, while the re ,t of the army followed with all the chariots of Egypt ; 

 here, therefore, they were in constant use, and serving as the cavalry of 

 the present day. 



Moreover, the oldest records which enter into any detail of their con- 

 struction described them in a very forward and perfect state. 



At the siege of Troy, nearly three thousand years ago, they formed, 

 according to Homer, the cavalry of the Greeks and Trojans ; and every 

 officer or hero of good blood possessed, at least, a pair of horses and a 

 charioteer. 



These chariots being built to run over broken ground, where no roads 

 existed, were made very low and broad, and they were by no means badly 

 contrived for the purpose for which they were intended ; the wheels were 

 constructed with a nave and spokes, felloes and tires ; and the pole, a, 

 appears to have been fixed on the axle-tree, b, in the manner shown infg. 

 26. The body of the chariot was placed upon this frame. The team most 



generally consisted, as we have before stated, of a pair of horses, attached 

 to the pole ; six and even a greater number of horses were, however, very 

 frequently harnessed abreast, but in that case a second pole was generally 

 affixed to the axle-tree, so as to have a pair of horses attached to each 

 pole, and the axle-trees themselves were always made nearly as long as 

 the whole width occupied by the horses. 



Tliey appear to have had light chariots for more domestic purposes, and 

 fiur-wheeled carriages for conveyance of heavy goods; and certainly King 

 Priam, when he went to the Grecian camp to ransom the body of his son 

 Hector, travelled with some degree of comfort and luxury: he rode himself 

 in a bcautifui neiv-huiU travelling carriage, drawn by favourite horses, while 

 the treasures, which he intended as a ransom, were conveyed in a four- 

 wheeled waggon drawn by mules. All these details, as well as the mode 

 of harnessing the horses, which operation, it must be confessed, was per- 

 formed by Priam himself and his sons, are fully described in the twenty- 

 fourth book of the Iliad. 



That Homer was well acquainted with the construction of the spoked 

 wheel running freely upon the axle-tree, and, perhaps, even with the mode 

 of hanging the body of the carriages upon straps for springs, in the same 

 manner as the public coaches are to this day in many parts of Francf, and 

 even in the neighbourhood of Paris, is evident from the passage in which 



