248 EEPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1887. 



number of elastic poles were firmly inserted in the earth in a circle the 

 size of the gunwale of the boat, and a horizontal pole was lashed to 

 these a few inches from the ground. The tops of these poles were bent 

 inward, each opposite pair being firmly and neatly lashed together at 

 a height from the ground to correspond with the depth of the craft. 

 This done, a buffalo-bull hide, depilated and thoroughly soaked, was 

 drawn down and stretched over the frame, and the edges secured to the 

 horizontal pole which served the purpose of a gunwale. The ends of 

 the poles were then cut off, the vessel turned over, any little crevices 

 were stopped, and the ferry-boat was ready to launch ;* and this is the 

 way the apparatus worked : Whenever an Indian wished to cross a 

 river in his bull-boat he placed therein his luggage and babies, and 

 fastening a rawhide line to his gunwale, he swam across the river with 

 the other end attached to his body. Behind the craft swam his wife or 

 daughters, pushing the boat as much as possible against the stream. 

 Indians have told the writer that oblong bull-boats were formerly used, 

 before the days of steam, whenever longer journeys were to be taken. 

 The practice would be perfectly in keeping with the birch-bark canoe 

 journeys of the tribes north and east, where the vessel was only an im- 

 proved bull-boat, in which birch-bark took the place of rawhide. 



According to Herodotus (I, § 1) Cleobis and Bito were honored by 

 Solon with the second place of happiness among men. u There was a 

 great festival in honor of the goddess Juuo at Argos, to which their 

 mother must needs be taken in a car. Now, the oxen did not come home 

 from the field in time, so the youth, fearful of being too late, put the 

 yoke on their own necks and themselves drew the car." Without dream- 

 ing of their distinguished company hundreds of rag-pickers, small- 

 truckmen, and peddlers are pulling and pushing wagons and carts 

 about the streets, sometimes alone and ofteu hitched by the side of dog 

 or donkey. t 



16. Throicing or tossing. — An immense amount of material is moved 

 by various methods of throwing, with or without tools. It is a process 

 of rapid transit in which the material alone moves without the neces- 

 sity of a track of any kind. Doubtless many will remember the old fash- 

 ion of passing buckets of water at a fire before the invention of engines. 

 The negroes in southern cities move many thousands of watermelons and 

 other produce from the vessels to the warehouses or wagons, often hun- 



* Cf. Lewis and Clarke's Travels, London, 1817, vol. 3, p. 348. 



t The Egyptian sculptures abound in representations of human traction in every 

 attitude in which it is possible for a man to be attached to a rope. See Rawlinson's 

 Herodotus, n, 72. See also in Kawlinson's Five Monarchies, New York, 1871, p. 402, from 

 Layard, a spirited picture of men moving a human-beaded bull. We have here in 

 one picture men drawing sledges, others drawing band-carts filled with ropes, and 

 others fixing rollers, working levers, holding props and guys, carrying rollers, relays 

 coming to relieve their fellows, taskmasters with clubs, and the boss on the front of 

 the sledge marking time for those at the ropes. All the draft-men have bricoles or 

 beckets as individual harness. 



