166 BOOK VI. 



covered with iron bands and revolve in iron rings. Each timber also has a 

 wooden pulley, which together with its iron axle revolves in holes in the 

 timber. These pulleys are hollowed out all round, in order that the drawing- 

 rope may not slip out of them, and thus each rope is drawn tight and turns 

 over its own roller and its own pulley. The iron hook of each rope is engaged 

 with the bale of the bucket. Further, with regard to the double cross- 

 beams which are mortised to the lower part of the main axle, to each end 

 of them there is mortised a small piece of wood four feet long. These appear 

 to hang from the double cross-beams, and a short wooden block is fixed to the 

 lower part of them, on which a driver sits. Each of these blocks has an iron 

 clavis which holds a chain, and that in turn a pole-bar. In this way it is 

 possible for two horses to draw this whim, now this way and now that ; turn 

 by turn one bucket is drawn out of the shaft full and another is let down 

 into it empty ; if, indeed, the shaft is very deep four horses turn the whim. 

 When a bucket has been drawn up, whether filled with dry or wet materials, 

 it must be emptied, and a workman inserts a grappling hook and overturns 

 it ; this hook hangs on a chain made of three or four links, fixed to a timber. 

 The fifth machine is partly like the whim, and partly like the third rag 

 and chain pump, which draws water by balls when turned by horse power, 

 as I will explain a little later. Like this pump, it is turned by horse 

 power and has two axles, namely, an upright one about whose lower end, 

 which decends into an underground chamber, there is a toothed drum and a 

 horizontal one, around which there is a drum made of rundles. It has indeed 

 two drums around its horizontal axle, similar to those of the big machine, but 

 smaller, because it draws buckets from a shaft almost two hundred and forty 

 feet deep. One drum is made of hubs to which cleats are fixed, and 

 the other is made of rundles ; and near the latter is a wheel two 

 feet deep, measured on all sides around the axle, and one foot wide ; and 

 against this impinges a brake, 10 which holds the whim when occasion demands 

 that it be stopped. This is necessary when the hide buckets are emptied 

 after being drawn up full of rock fragments or earth, or as often as water 

 is poured out of buckets similarly drawn up ; for this machine not only 

 raises dry loads, but also wet ones, just like the other four machines which 

 I have already described. By this also, timbers fastened on to its winding- 

 chain are let down into a shaft. The brake is made of a piece of wood one 

 foot thick and half a foot long, projecting from a timber that is suspended 

 by a chain from one end of a beam which oscillates on an iron pin, this in 

 turn being supported in the claws of an upright post ; and from the other end 

 of this oscillating beam a long timber is suspended by a chain, and from this 

 long timber again a short beam is suspended. A workman sits on the short 

 beam when the machine needs to be stopped, and lowers it ; he then inserts 

 a plank or small stick so that the two timbers are held down and cannot be 

 raised. In this way the brake is raised, and seizing the drum, presses it 

 so tightly that sparks often fly from it ; the suspended timber to which 

 the short beam is attached, has several holes in which the chain is 

 l Harpago,A "grapple" or "hook." 



