432 O^ DRAUGHT. 



The principle appears to us so simple as to have been necessarily the 

 result 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 

 Christian era they appear to have been in common use amongst the 

 Egyptians in the warfare. Pharaoh despatched six hundred chosen chariots 

 in pursuit of the Israelites, immediately that he was informed of their 

 escape, while the rest 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. 



I 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 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, «, 

 appears to have been fixed on the axle-tree, 6, in the manner shewn mjig. 

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



Ftg. 26. 



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, how- 

 ever, frequently harnessed abreast, but in that case a second pole was ge- 

 nerally affixed to the axletree, so as to have a pair of horses attached to 

 each pole, and the axletrees themselves were always made nearly as long 

 as the whole width occupied by the horses. 



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

 four-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 beautiful new built travelling carriage^ drawn by favourite horses, 

 while the treasures, intended as a ransom, were conveyed in a four-wheeled 

 waggon drawn by mules. All these details, as well as the mode of har- 

 nessing the horses, which operation, it must be confessed, was performed 

 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 axletree, 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 France, and 

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



