THE HUMAN BEAST OF BURDEN. 247 



shoulder-strap and a peg that goes into the hole left by unscrewing the 

 legs. Two men can carry a piano thus. 



15. Hauling. — The simplest form of traction among men may be seen 

 in the small boy dragging his wagon or sledge. With the arms alone 

 for traces the primitive man dragged his game over the ground or ice 

 to his distant home. Even two or more might cooperate in this prime- 

 val team. The next step would be the use of a line, perhaps of raw- 

 hide, perhaps of fiber. Along the edge of some quiet water they walked, 

 those pristine tow- men, dragging their rafts or rude boats from the 

 pebbly beach. Here began that immense industry now carried on in 

 the canals of the world. 



The ways of fastening one's self to this traction or tow line are many.* 

 The simplest is the grasp of the hand. Others may be seen bending 

 to their work with the line over the shoulder, around the waist, or tied 

 to a becket or bricole. A curious variety of this tracking is seen on 

 Etissian rivers, where an anchor is carried up-stream in a small boat 

 and dropped. The cable passes back to a windlass or a heavy barge, 

 by which the great mass is moved up to the anchor. A delightful spec- 

 imen of helpless modern invention is a picture in Baker's u Ismailia."t 

 Steamer No. 10 has balked among the rank vegetation of a canal, and 

 she is being hauled along by a hundred or more naked Africans drag- 

 ging at a cable. In the Southern States formerly the great shad-nets 

 were drawn ashore by a gang of fifty to one hundred negroes, who wore 

 each a becket with a Turk's-head kuot, which the seine-hauler knew 

 how to attach or detach in a second. 



A species of tracking practiced on the Upper Missouri and other 

 northern rivers in the fur-trading period before steam-boat days, has 

 been called to the writer's attention by Dr. Washington Matthews, U. 

 S. Army. It is called cordeling.j: The goods of the trader are loaded 

 upon a boat and the craft dragged by a tow-line along the margin of 

 the stream. These articles were traded for furs until the boat had 

 gradually exchanged its freight of civilized wares for peltry. Then the 

 craft was easily floated back to St. Louis, its starting point. Mention 

 is made of this process by Lewis and Clarke, Prince of Wied, Brack- 

 enridge, and other travelers of the pre-steamboat days. 



Before cordeling, even, there was a method of ferriage of the most 

 primitive character practiced on the Missouri Eiver. The bull-boat was 

 a contrivance used as a primitive ferry. It was made as follows : A 



* Hinds's Labrador, vol. 1, pp. 77, 94. 



t New York, 1875, opp. p. 53. 



J " The British fur companies held the trade of these Indians until 1807, when Man- 

 uel Lisa ascended the river in keel-boafcs to the Mandan villages and beyond. Until 

 1832 goods were brought up the Missouri River chiefly in keel-boats, or Mackinaw 

 boats, which were cor deled, or towed by men with great labor againvt the rapid cur- 

 rent of the river. Two summers at least were always occupied in dragging a boat 

 from St. Louis to the head of navigation, the crew sustaiuing themselves chiefly by- 

 hunting." Ethnography of the Hidatsa, p. 30. 



