238 REPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1887. 



back-strap or head-band has passed upward through inventive creation 

 into the train and track, the latest common carrier (which constitutes 

 the phytogeny of the railway). 



At the lower end of this line of inventions and experiences, neglecting 

 all the mental burdens which often weigh heavier on us than oar packs, 

 as we pass downward ignoring wagon trains, mule trains, caravans, 

 couriers, pack-horses, dog travois and sleds, reindeer sledges, donkeys, 

 llamas, and other beasts of burdeu, we come at last to the primitive 

 common carrier, the pack-man himself, and also the pack-woman, for 

 men and women were the first beasts of burden.* 



Primitive commerce and all the carrying and running involved in 

 primeval arts connected with food, shelter, clothing, rest, enjoyment, 

 and war were accomplished on the heads or foreheads, shoulders or 

 backs, or iu the hands of men and women $ and civilization, while it has 

 invented many ways of burden bearing, finds also an endless variety of 

 uses for the old methods. How many thousands of our fellow-creatures 

 are still in this condition of mere beasts of burden? It is, for instance, 

 only a few years since the invention of the passenger aud freight ele- 

 vator began to supplant that train of " hod-carriers," who have been 

 since the beginning of architecture carrying upward to its completion 

 every wooden and brick structure in the world. 



To get something like an adequate conception of the enormous amount 

 of labor performed by human backs, calculate the weight of every earth- 

 work, mound, fort, canal, embankment, wooden, brick, metal, and 

 stone structure and fabrication on earth. These have all been carried 

 many times and elevated by human muscle. In the light of this con- 

 templation, Atlas, son of Heaven and Earth, supporting on his shoul- 

 ders the pillars of the sky, is the apotheosis of the human son of toil, 

 and the gaping wonder of archaeologists over the hand-made struct- 

 ures of Thebes, Palenque, Carnac, and Salisbury Plain subsides to the 

 level of a mathematical problem. Indeed, the great majority of earth- 

 works, mounds, menhirs, cairns, cromlechs, and dolmens now to be seen 

 witnessed the exertions of no otfyer artisan than the human carrier, t 



In the Internationale Archiv fur Ethnographie, Plate IX, is a street 

 scene in Singapore. The first thing that arrests the attention is that 

 everybody is carrying something or is harnessed to something. Com- 

 mencing at the left hand occur the following: 



(1) Two coolies carrying a lady in a hammock. 



(2) Two coolies carrying a live pig in a bamboo cylinder suspended 

 to a pole. 



(:j) A lady carrying a fan and a reticule. 



* Innumerable examples of women as burden -bearers may be cited. See Schoolcraft, 

 Archives, vol. vi, plate opp. p. 560; J. G. Wood, Unciv. Races, vol. I, p. 330, et seq. 



tCf. Lucien Carr, Mounds of the Mississippi Valley, p. 90, for a calculation of the 

 time required to build an earth mound. Reference is made to the coal-carriers in St. 

 Thomas, and to a paragraph by Isaac McCoy in the History of the Baptist Indian 

 Missions, p. 27, for the capabilities in this line of a single tribe of Indians. 



