THE HUMAN BEAST OF BURDEN. 239 



(4) A coolie carrying on his right shoulder a pole; from one end dangles 

 a box, from the other a basket. Indeed, there are three men hitched in 

 this fashion in the foreground. 



(5) A man dragging a small track loaded with bundles. 



(6) A coolie carrying a furnace on the end of a stick resting on Ms 

 shoulder, as a peddler does his pack. 



(7) A coolie drawing a jinrickasha. 



(8) A Chinese gentleman carrying a fan and a cane. 



Considering the activity now displayed in transporting men and pro- 

 ductions from one part of the earth to another, it will not be a valueless 

 contribution to science if we trace the natural history of those early 

 occupations and industries, the improvement of whose apparatus and 

 methods stimulated the pristine inventors to make their burdens lighter, 

 to enable the human carrier to bear the load with greater ease, to ren- 

 der his pack weight proportionate to the length of his journeys, and to 

 adapt his occupation to the ever new exigencies of his environment. 



It is a common saying that we must go to nature for our supplies. 

 Equally true is it that we go in vain, unless we descend to the condi- 

 tion of the brutes, if we expect nature to supply us with aught else 

 than that whereon we may exercise the inventive faculty. Indeed, there 

 are innumerable examples of animals transporting materials to distant 

 places in order to utilize them. The beaver, the bird, the lamprey eel, 

 the bee, the ant are all carriers.* Many animals also modify natural 

 objects for the purpose of using them. But the two ideas of modifying 

 a natural object for the purpose of making a carrying tool seem to con- 

 cur only in the human mind. We are the only animals that modify 

 nature to produce a carrying device. Again, these creatures all carry 

 their implements and weapons with them as part of their natural en- 

 dowment; they do not have to invent them. But the farmer, the arti- 

 san, the professional man, even the laborers go about weighted down, 

 with their tools, apparatus, books, or even their carrying implements 

 as ponderous often as the trunk and tusks are to the elephant. 



There are two sets of ideas involved in harnessing the human jument, 

 which may be studied in part separately, in part together. They are 

 conveyance and transportation, or the carrying of the man and the carry- 

 ing of things. The former may be older, for devices in which to carry 

 infants may have been the first in the order of invention. The passen- 

 ger and the freight train express the two ideas exactly, because each, 

 while encroaching on the function of the other, has modifications for its 

 own ends. The subject of mere locomotion involving snow-shoes, canes, 

 staves, alpenstocks, stilts, crutches, and the like will not be here con- 

 sidered, because they are only aids to locomotion and involve little that 

 relates to the beast of burden. 



The cradle-board and other devices for carrying infants will also be 



* For comparison of tbo engineering skill of beavers and ants with that of the mound- 

 builders, cf. Lucieu Carr, "The Mounds of < lie. Mississippi Valley," p. 66. 



