V] THE DEVELOPMENT OF EQUITATION 483 



and who made their tents from, and clad themselves and their 

 families in, the warm robes of their noble quarry. 



After these Indians had become possessed of horses it cer- 

 tainly became their practice on striking camp to pack up all 

 their goods and chattels in the skin tents and tie the bundle 

 on the pole, and trail the poles behind their horses, whilst the 

 dogs were even employed to draw smaller loads on trailing 

 stakes. 



From such a rude beginning as that last mentioned it seems 

 fairly certain that the Eskimo of the Far North developed their 

 famous dog-sledges. There can be no doubt that the sledge 

 is the first step in the evolution of the wheeled vehicle. The 

 sledge or slide-car 1 has played a considerable part in the life 

 of the more remote districts of these Islands down to our 

 days, for such were still in use in Strathglass, Kintail, and 

 elsewhere in Scotland in the years 1863 and 1864. It con- 

 sisted of two shafts, the body being formed by two pieces of 

 wood bent in a semicircle, the ends of which were fastened to 

 the shafts, the one close behind the pony, and the other a little 

 distance behind ; the arches were steadied at the top by a piece 

 of wood running from the one to the other. Thin slats of 

 wood formed the bottom of this primitive contrivance. This 

 vehicle is still in use in the glens of Antrim under the Gaelic 

 name of carr sliunain. 



The Wheel. It is assumed that the next step was to 

 place beneath such a sledge or slide-car a roller formed out of 

 the cylindrical trunk of a tree, but as 13r Haddon well remarks, 

 " there does not appear to be any positive evidence to render 

 this view absolutely certain." Herr Stephan described a very 

 primitive car that he saw in Portugal : a log is cut from a 

 large tree, the central portion is hacked away so as to leave 

 a solid disc at each end, joined together by an axle. The next 

 step was to form the block wheels of two separate cross- 

 sections of a tree trunk, but fixed firmly on a separate axle- 



1 For the following account of the slide-car and other primitive vehicles, 

 as well as block wheels, I am indebted to the admirable statement of the 

 traditional view given by Dr Haddon in The Study of Man (London 1898), 

 pp. 161199. 



312 



