CARRIAGES. 25 



better chariot driven by a notoriously less expert warrior, lands 

 us again in the region of speculation. 



The earliest wheeled vehicles chariots -of which traces 

 exist on the monuments to which reference has been made, 

 were drawn by two horses, and here, again, it is obvious that 

 there must have been a lapse of time during which events 

 happened of which there is no record ; for it seems only 

 natural to suppose that men must for a long period have driven 

 one horse before somebody hit on the notion of a pair, though 

 when once the pair was started the natural vanity of man and 

 his desire to display his wealth and consequence rather, perhaps, 

 than consideration as to the work horses were required to do, 

 length of their journeys, the weight they had to draw, would 

 suggest teams of four, six, eight, and even a greater number. 

 Another discovery, which no doubt created a stir at the time, 

 was the four-wheeled carriage in all probability the roughest 

 possible form of waggon. Bible history may here be drawn 

 upon. In the 4 ist chapter of Genesis, which is dated 1715 

 B.C., we read that ' Pharaoh took off his ring from his hand, and 

 put it upon Joseph's hand, and arrayed him in vestures of fine 

 linen, and put a gold chain about his neck. And he made him 

 to ride in the second chariot which he had.' Some eight years 

 later Pharaoh sent for Jacob. Joseph was bidden to say to his 

 brethren, ' Take you waggons out of the land of Egypt for your 

 little ones and for your wives, and bring your father and come.' 

 Joseph gave them waggons accordingly, and we can only suppose 

 that waggons were known in Canaan, for when Jacob saw them 

 he perfectly understood what they were and why they had been 

 sent. 



We thus have the record of the waggon nearly 2,000 years 

 B.C. Four-wheeled waggons were used by the Greeks and by 

 the Romans, but the two-wheeled chariot was always the 

 favourite vehicle of the ancients for war or for pomp, perhaps 

 because there was more elegance about it, and it was much 

 speedier. The poets and historians of old took delight in 



