180 ROAD, TRACK, AND STABLE. 
vehicle. They use, all the year round, a sledge made 
of bent saplings fastened with wooden pins and raw- 
hide thongs. 
The invention of the solid disk-wheel was a stroke 
of genius which should have immortalized the name 
of its author, and yet history records neither that 
nor his nationality. It is certain, however, that he 
lived thousands of years before the Christian era. 
The disk-wheel being in use, ingenious men gradu- 
ally punched holes in it to reduce the weight, until at 
last they arrived at the modern spoked wheel. Cen- 
turies more elapsed before anything that can be dig- 
nified with the name of carriage was built. It was 
about the beginning of the thirteenth century that 
carriages were first used by the nobility in England; 
and the roads were so bad and the vehicles so heavy 
that they were of little service until toward the end 
of the sixteenth century. A contemporary account 
of the city of London, written in 1550, speaks of the 
streets as being even then “very foul, full of pits 
and sloughs, very perilous and noxious.” Fifty years 
later, coaches had become so numerous that a bill was 
introduced in Parliament to restrain their use, one 
argument in its favor being that the watermen were 
losing custom because people travelled by the road 
instead of by river. This bill was rejected, but in 
1660 Parliament reduced the number of coaches in 
London from two thousand to four hundred. About 
the same time, the present custom of driving for 
pleasure and for show in Hyde Park was established. 
But until the end of the seventeenth century 
coaches and chariots must have afforded very rough 
riding; for springs were not invented till about 1665, 
