THE QUARRYING AND TRANSPORT OF ITS STONES. 8 1 



China and Japan in an ancient drawing, that the principle 

 employed at Stonehenge for the transport of its larger stones 

 was their suspension in a massive framework of horizontal 

 beams, to which traverse poles were fastened, to he supported 

 on the shoulders of as many men as might be required. But 

 in a country like the High Peak of Derbyshire, where no 

 long timber grows, and where the surface of the land, instead 

 of being of a rich alluvial or sandy soil, is of a close, hard 

 turf, with a harder sub-soil of yellow earth beneath of no 

 great thickness above the solid rock, and which for a long 

 period in the winter is, owing to its great altitude, so frequently 

 frozen, I think the object would be attained by a simpler 

 process. 



In so different a district, the transport would, in all pro- 

 bability, be effected upon a strong sledge, made of two short 

 wooden runners bound together by cross timbers. Upon this 

 the large stones would be placed, and by means of ropes 

 of hides or grasses easily drawn by a number of men from 

 the quarry to the site at Arbor Low ; very much in the 

 same way as some of the farmers on the hill-sides in North 

 Derbyshire still drag their hay to the barns, and as the miners 

 of old hauled their lead ore to the " day-eye," or shaft bottom, 

 in the mine. 



