Here, too, it is to be noticed that the driver is shown with his arms over the backs of the animals. In another chariot, which most probably was Persian, the body seems to be made of a “light wood, as of interlaced canes. Similar chariots are seen in the Assyrian bas-reliefs and others, somewhat resembling this, on Etruscan and Grecian painted vases. A chariot thus constituted must have been of extreme rapidity and of scarcely any weight.”[12]
The Persians also had an idol-car, which was a kind of moving platform, and their chariots were at one period armed with scythes. These scythes, generally considered to be the invention of Cyrus, do not seem to have hung from the axle-ends, as was the case in Britain, but from the body itself, “in order,” thinks Ginzrot, who wrote on these early carriages, “to allow the wheels to turn unobstructed. In this way,” he says, “the scythes had a firm hold, and could inflict more damage than if they had been applied to the wheels or felloes and revolved with them. Nearly all writers treating on this subject are of this opinion, and Curtius says: Alias deinde falces summis rotarum orbibus hærebant [thence curving downwards]. The scythes could easily have been attached to the body ... and, notwithstanding, it might be said they extended over the felloe, for Curtius said, not that the scythes revolved with the wheels, but hærebant.”[13]
Early Indian carriages were probably not very different from some of those now in use amongst the natives. The common gharry is certainly built after a primitive model. In this there are two wheels, “a high axle-tree bed, and a long platform, frequently made of two bamboos, which join in front and form the pole, to which two oxen are yoked.” In Arabia there was the araba, a primitive latticed carriage for women, which possessed “wing-guards”—pieces of wood shaped to the top of the wheels and projecting over them—a feature also to be found in the early Persian cars.
Taking these early carriages as a whole one may be inclined to feel surprise at the varieties displayed, yet there were not after all very great differences between them. They were two-or four-wheeled contrivances with a long pole in front, and it is only in mere size and decoration that discrimination can properly be made. “The Egyptians,” says Thrupp, “with all their learning and skill, appear to have made no change during the centuries of experience; as at the beginning, so at the end, the kings stand by the side of their charioteers, or hold the reins themselves. The Persians and Hindoos introduced luxurious improvements, and in lofty vehicles elevated the nobles above the heads of the people, and secluded their women in curtained carriages. The Greeks introduced no new vehicles, but perfected so successfully the useful waggon, that their model is still seen throughout Europe, without change of principle or structure. The Romans, on the other hand, in their career of conquest, gathered from every nation what was good, and, wherever possible, improved upon it.” After the fall of the Roman Empire, however, there was little further progress for several centuries. In the general retrogression, which, rightly or wrongly, one associates with those dark ages, the wheeled carriage, in common with a multitude of other adjuncts to civilisation, was to suffer.
Chapter the Second
THE AGE OF LITTERS
“There is a litter; lay him in ’t and
drive toward Dover, friend!”