114 
HINTS TO TRAVELLERS. 
nation now exists absolutely in the Bronze Age, but this alloy still 
occupies something in its old place in Oriental industry. As an example 
of the methods still to be seen, may be mentioned the Burmese bell¬ 
founding, which is done, not in a hollow mould of sand, but by what 
in Europe is called the tire perdue process, the model of the bell being 
made in bees-wax and imbedded in the sand-mould, the wax being melted 
and the hot metal taking its place. The whole history of machinery is 
open to the traveller, who still meets with every stage of its development, 
from savagery upward. He sees, for instance, every tilling implement 
from the stake with fire-hardened point, and the hoe of crooked branch, 
up to the modern forms of plough. In like manner he can trace the 
line from the rudest stone-crushers or rubbers for grinding seed or 
grain up to the rotating hand-mills or querns still common in the East, 
and surviving even in Scotland. From time to time some special con¬ 
trivance may be seen near its original home, as in South America the 
curious plaited tube for wringing out the juice from cassava, or the net 
hammock which still retains its native Haitian name hamaca . Archi¬ 
tecture still preserves in different regions interesting early stages of 
development, from the rudest breakwinds, or beehive huts of wattled 
boughs, up to houses of logs and hewn timber, structures of mud and 
adobes, and masonry of rough or hewn stone. Even the construction of 
the bough-hut or the log-house often has its peculiarities in the arrange¬ 
ments of posts and rafters. Among the modes of construction which interest 
the student of architectural history is building with rough unhewn stones. 
Many examples of “rude stone monuments” are to be seen on our own 
moors and hills. The most familiar kinds are dolmens ( i.e . “ table-stones ”), 
formed by upright stones bearing a cap-stone; they were burial-places, 
and analogous to the cists or chambers of rough slabs within burial- 
mounds. Less clearly explicable are the single standing-stones or menhirs 
(i.e. “ long-stones ”), and the circles of stones or cromlechs. Ancient and 
obscure in meaning as such monuments are in Europe, there are regions 
where their construction or use comes down to modern times, especially 
in India, where among certain tribes the deposit of ashes of the dead in 
dolmens, the erection of menhirs in memory of great men, and even 
sacrifice in stone circles, are well-known customs. The traveller may 
also sometimes have opportunities of observing the ancient architectural 
construction by fitting together many-sided stones into what are some- 
