Fig. 62.—Corn-crusher, Anglesey (after W. O. Stanley).
Fig. 63.—Hebrides women grinding with the quern or hand-mill (after Pennant).
Another group of revolving tools and machines begins with the drill. The simplest mode of twirling the boring-stick between the hands is to be seen in fire-making ([Fig. 72]). In this clumsy way rude tribes know how to bore holes through hard stone by patiently twirling a reed or stick with sharp sand and water. This primitive tool was improved both for making fire and boring holes, by winding round the stick a thong or cord, which by being pulled backward and forward worked the drill, as the ancient shipwrights boring their timbers are described in the Odyssey (ix. 384). The ingenious plan of using a bow with its string to drive the drill, so that one man can manage it, was already known in the old Egyptian workshops, but the still more perfect Archimedean drill is modern. The turning-lathe seems to have had its origin in the drill. To those who have only seen the lathe in its improved modern forms this may not be clear, but it is seen by looking at the old-fashioned pole-lathe with which the turner used to shape his wooden bowls and chair-legs, which were made to revolve by a cord pulled up and down, on somewhat the same principle as the Homeric drill. The foot-lathe, with its crank and continuous revolution, superseded this, to be itself encroached upon by the introduction of steam-power for driving, and even for applying the tool in the self-acting lathe.
In examining these groups of instruments and machines, the development of many of them has been traced back till their origins are lost in dim præhistoric ages, or to where ancient history can show them arising from a fresh idea or a new turn given to an old one. It is seldom possible to get at the real author of an ancient invention. Thus no one knows exactly when and how that wonderful mechanical contrivance, the screw, appeared. It was familiar to the Greek mathematicians, and the screw linen-presses and oil-presses of classic times look almost modern in their construction. In the period of ancient civilization there appear the beginnings of that immense change which is remodelling modern life, by inventions which set the forces of nature to do man’s heavy work for him. This great change seems to have been especially brought on by contrivances to save the heavy toil of watering the fields. A simple hand-labour contrivance of this kind is the shadoof of the Nile valley, where a long pole with a counterpoise at one end is supported on posts, and carries a bucket hanging to the longer end to dip up water from below. One need not travel to the East to watch this old contrivance, for it is to be seen at work in our brickfields. For irrigation, it was mechanically an improvement on this to set a gang of slaves to turn a great wheel with buckets or earthen jars at its circumference, which rose full from the water below, and as they turned over emptied themselves into a trough at a higher level. But when such a wheel was built to dip in a running stream, then the current itself would turn the wheel, and thus would come into existence the noria or irrigating water-wheel often mentioned in ancient literature, and to be seen still at work both in the East and in Europe. By these or some similar steps of invention the water-wheel was made a source of power for doing other work, such as grinding corn, instead of the women at the quern or the slaves at the tread-mill, or the mill-horse in his everlasting round. As the Greek epigram says, “Cease your work, ye maids who laboured at the mills, sleep and let the birds sing to the returning dawn, for Demeter has bidden the water nymphs to do your task; obedient to her call, they throw themselves on the wheel and turn the axle and the heavy mill.” The classical corn-mill, with the cog-wheels driven by the water-wheel, may have been a good deal like the water-mills still working on our country streams. Such machinery was early applied to grinding corn, and afterwards to other manufactures, so that now the word mill no longer means a grinding-mill only, but is also used where machinery is driven by power for other purposes. It was a great movement in civilization for the water-mill and its companion contrivance the wind-mill to come into use as force-providers, doing all sorts of labour, from the heaviest work of the European factory down to turning the Tibetan prayer-wheels, which go round repeating for ever the sacred Buddhist formula. Within the last century the civilized world has been drawing an immense supply of power from a new source, the coal burnt in the furnace of the steam-engine, which is already used so wastefully that economists are uneasily calculating how long this stored-up fossil force will last, and what must be turned to next—tide force or sun’s heat—to labour for us. Thus, in modern times, man seeks more and more to change the labourer’s part he played in early ages, for the higher duty of director or controller of the world’s force.
CHAPTER IX.
ARTS OF LIFE—(continued).
Quest of wild food, [206]—Hunting, [207]—Trapping, [211]—Fishing, [212]—Agriculture, [214]—Implements, [216]—Fields, [218]—Cattle, pasturage, [219]—War, [221]—Weapons, [221]—Armour, [222]—Warfare of lower tribes, [223]—of higher nations, [225].