190 [Assembly 



MORTAR. 



BY R. L. PELL, of Pelham, Ulster Co., N. Y. 



In the days of Italy and of Greece, mortar was not used in con- 

 structing temples ; the immense stones made use of rendered it un- 

 necessary, as their weight was sufficient to keep them in their places. 

 In ancient Babylon, bitumen was sometime employed to cement the 

 stones of their houses together, remains of which are said to exist 

 even now. The cement made use of by the ancient Romans must 

 have been superior to any we now have in use, for example : The 

 emperor Trajan built a bridge across the river Danube, which cannot 

 possibly be too much admired, though all the works of Trajan were 

 magnificent in the extreme, this bridge far exceeded them all. The 

 length was 4770 feet, the piers were distant from each other 170 feet, 

 and there were 20 of them, built of square stone laid in cement, each 

 pier was 150 feet high and 60 feet in breadth. The most extraordi- 

 nary feature to be observed is that the river at this point is exceedingly 

 rapid, very deep, and has a soft, muddy bottom. The emperor Adri- 

 an afterwards succeeded in breaking down the arches, but the piers he 

 could not destroy, and they there remain a monument of the ingenu- 

 ity of Trajan and his architect, as well as the strength and lasting 

 properties of his mortar. I infer from the fact that among the ancient 

 Grecian nations the arch was not understood, that they did not know 

 the use of morta rand the antediluvians certainly could not as no ac- 

 counts have been handed down to us, that they inhabited houses com- 

 posed of more than one apartment, or of different stories. The idea 

 was first given to mortals, I imagine, by the deity ; when he com- 

 manded Noah to construct his ark of different stories and rooms. If 

 rooms, one above the other had been known by the antediluvians, 

 God would have given Noah a perspective view of the rooms and 

 stones as he did Moses. 



The Chinese probably knew the use of mortar long before the 

 Greeks and Romans, and consequently the use of the arch, in fact, 

 no modern nations even at this day, have been able to equal them in 

 this respect, notwithstanding we boast of elegance and magnificence. 

 The Chinese have constructed a bridge of a single arch, the materials 



