11;J Stonehenge and its Barrows. 



of tlie capstan, so that as the shaft revolved the rope was coiled on 

 the ground by a man, who, with the end in his baud, sat upon the 

 capstan-frame below. There were four arms to the windlass, each 

 manned on ordinary occasions, by a couple of men, and by four men, 

 which number I never happenedto see exceeded, in case of an acclivity. 

 In order to obtain an uniform surface for the machine to pass over, 

 there were used, instead of rollers, wooden planks, covered with 

 soft soap ; and the services of two men were constantly required, 

 one to soap the boards, and the other to remove them from the rear 

 to the front as the sledge proceeded. The operation thus performed 

 by successive removals of the ci'owbar to a farther distance, so soon 

 as the rope became expended and coiled, occupied no less, with the 

 exclusion of Sundays and saints' days, than a whole month, and the 

 motion was in fact so slow as to be hardly perceptible.' ' The dis- 

 tance from the IMarmorata on the banks of the Tiber to the desti- 

 nation of this block of marble in the Via del Babuino, would be under 

 two miles. 



Herodotus tells us (II., c. 124) that Cheops, when he succeeded 

 to the throne closed the temples, and forbade the Egyptians to offer 

 sacrifice, compelling them instead to labom-, one and all, in his 

 service (for the erection of his pyramid) . Some were required to di-ag 

 blocks of stone down to the Nile from the quarries in the Arabian 

 range of hills ; others received the blocks after they had been con- 

 veyed in boats across the river, and drew them to the range of hills 

 called the Lybian. A. hundred thousand men laboured constantly, 

 and were relieved every tlu-ee months by a fresh lot. In Canon 

 Rawlinson's translation of Herodotus, and in Sir Gardner Wilkinson's 

 " Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians " (iii., 328, ed. 

 1837),^ may be seen wood-cuts of the representation of a colossus 



'"The ancient Assyrians and Egyptians have recorded on their walls by 

 paintings and sculpture the method employed in transporting these masses. 

 Apparently the lever was the only mechanical power used, and with unlimited 

 supplies of human labour this would be the most direct and expeditious imple- 

 ment ; but it is probable that other mechanical aids \': ere employed where stones 

 such as obelisks had to be lifted. From a carved slab, moreover, which formed 

 part of the wall panels of the palace of Sardanapalus we learn that the pulley 

 was known in a simple form." — Sir John Hawkshaw's Address delivered before 

 the British Association, at Bristol, Aug, 25th, 1875. 



