We have next to examine the dwellings of mankind. Thinking of the nests of birds, the dams of beavers, the tree-platforms of apes, it can scarcely be supposed that man at any time was unable to build himself a shelter. That he does not always do so is mostly because while on the move from place to place he may be content to sleep in the open, or take to the natural shelter of a tree or rock. Thus in the Andaman Islands the roving savages have been noticed to resort to the sea-shore, where, under some overhanging cliff that kept off the wind, they would scoop themselves out each a hole in the sand to lie in. Rock-shelters under the cliffs were in Europe the resort of the ancient savages, as is proved by the bones and flint flakes and other remains that are found lying there in the ground. Caves are ready-made houses for beast or man. It has been already mentioned (p. 31) how in such countries as England and France, caverns were the abodes of the old tribes of the reindeer and mammoth period, and the Bushmen of South Africa are a modern example of rude tribes thus given to dwelling in caves in the rocks. But caverns are so convenient, that they are now and then still used in the civilized world, and most of us have seen some cave in a cliff forming the back of a fisherman’s cottage, or at least a storehouse. It is not so much with these natural dwellings that we are here concerned as with artificial structures, however rude, set up by man for his shelter.

In the depths of Brazilian forests, travellers have come upon the dwellings of the naked Puris, which are not even huts, only sloping screens made by setting up a row of huge palm-leaves some eight feet long, leaning against a cross-pole. Being put up to windward, this shelters the lazy Indian as he lolls in his hammock slung between two trees, and with the dense foliage overhead life is not comfortless on fine days, though in bad weather the family and dogs have to crouch defenceless round the wood fire on the ground. Even in these tropical forests, what is generally met with is a real hut, though it may be such a rude one as the Botocudos make with these same great palm-leaves, sticking a number of them with their stalks in the ground in a circle, and bringing their points together, so as to form a roof overhead. The Patachos go to work more artificially, bending together young growing trees and poles stuck in the ground, so that by binding their tops together they form a framework which is then thatched over with large leaves. Much the same lesson in primitive architecture may be learnt from the natives of Australia, among whom a party camping out will be content to set up a line of leafy boughs in the ground to form a screen or breakwind for the night; but when they take the pains to interlace such boughs overhead, the screen becomes a hut, and where they stay for a while they will make a regular framework of branches, covering them in with sheets of bark, or leaves and grass, and even laying on sods or daubing the outside with clay. The invention of the simple round hut is thus easily understood. It is plain, too, how a conical hut, when roving tribes like the American Indians carry from place to place its poles and skins or sheets of bark, becomes in fact a portable tent, and this shows how tents came to be invented. The more cultured herdsmen of the East carry for their tent-coverings sheets of felted hair or wool, and we ourselves use for temporary shelter tents of canvas. Indeed one has only to look at the common bell-tent of the soldier to see that it is a transformed savage hut. Now the circular hut, whether beehive or conical, is low to creep into and small to lie or crouch in. More room is often got by digging the earth out some feet deep within, but a greater improvement in construction is to raise the hut itself on posts or a wall, so that what was at first the whole house now becomes the roof. Thus is built the round hut with its side-posts filled in with wattle and mud, or its solid earthen wall carrying the thatched roof which may reach beyond in shady eaves. Such were in ancient times common peasants’ dwellings in Europe, as they still are in other quarters of the world, and indeed we perhaps keep up a memory of them in the round thatched summer-houses in our gardens, which are curiously like the real huts of barbarians. Next, as African travellers remark, one great sign of higher civilization is when people begin to build their houses square-cornered instead of round. The circular hut to be easily built must be small, and room is best gained by building the house oblong, with a ridge pole along the roof where the sloping poles from the sides meet. By being able to build to any required length, it became possible for many families, often twenty, to live together in village-houses as rude peoples often do. In barbaric countries spacious houses are built with the roofs carried on lofty posts with cross-timbers, or on solid wails of earth or stones; in fact they are constructed on much the same principles as our modern houses, though more rudely.

It does not seem difficult to make out how stone and brick architecture came into use. Where wood is scarce, men readily take to building wails of stones, turf, or earth. Thus the Australians are known to build shelters by heaping up loose stones as a wall, and roofing with sticks laid across. Rough stones, though they make good embankments and low walls, would be too unsteady for high walls, except slaty and stratified slabs which form natural building-stones. With mere stones out of the ground dwellings would hardly be built of a higher kind than the curious beehive-houses of the Hebrides, whose small rudely vaulted chambers are formed by the piled stones overlapping inwards till they almost meet above, and covered in with growing turf, so that they look like grassy hillocks with passages for the dwellers to creep in. This primitive building is very ancient, and though such houses are no longer made, the old ones still serve as shealings in summer. The ancient Scotch underground dwellings or “weems,” (i.e. caves) have chambers of rough stones, and remind antiquaries of Tacitus’ account of the caves dug by the ancient Germans and heaped over with dirt, where they stored their grain and took refuge themselves from the cold, and in time of war from the enemy. When the craft of the mason is brought in, buildings of a higher order begin. The stones may at first be merely trimmed to fit one another like the pieces of a mosaic, as in the so-called Cyclopean stone-work of old Etruscan and Roman walls. But the world soon adopts a higher way, not arranging the plan to suit the stones, but shaping the stones to fit the work, especially using rectangular blocks of stone to lay down in regular courses of masonry. In ancient Egypt, the masons hewed and smoothed even granite and porphyry to a finish which is envied by the architects of our own day, and the pyramids of Gizeh are as wonderful for the fine masonry of their slopes, chambers, and passages, as for their prodigious size. Our modern notion of a stone building is that the blocks of stone are to be fixed together with a layer of mortar to bind them, but in the old and beautiful architecture of Egypt and Greece the faced stone blocks lie on one another, having no cement to hold them, and needing none. Clamps of metal were used when required to hold the stones together. Cement or mortar (so called from the mortar or trough in which it was mixed) was also well known in the ancient world. The Roman builders not only used the common lime-and-sand mortar, which hardens by absorbing carbonic acid from the air, but they also knew how by adding volcanic ash or pozzolana to make a water-resisting cement, whence the name of “Roman cement” given to a composition used by our masons. Mention has been already made of the practice of coating the sides of the savage bough-hut with clay. The ancient people who built their settlements on piles out in the Swiss lakes used to do this, as is proved by bits of the clay coating which were accidentally baked when the huts were burnt down, and fell into the water, where they may still be found, showing the impressions of the long-perished reed cabins on which the moist clay was plastered. We still have something of the kind in what cottage-builders call “wattle and daub.” One also sees now and then in an English country lane a cottage or cowhouse which is a relic of another sort of primitive architecture, its walls being simply built of “cob”, that is, clay mixed with straw. Such hut-walls of clay or mud are very usual in dry climates such as Egypt, where they are cheaper and better than timber. This being so, there is no difficulty in understanding how sun-dried bricks came into use, these being simply convenient blocks of the same mud or loam mixed with straw which was used to build the cottage walls. These sun-dried bricks were used in the East from high antiquity. Some of the Egyptian pyramids still standing are built of them, and the pictures show how the clay was tempered and the large bricks formed in wooden moulds much as in modern brickfields. With these the architects of Nineveh built the palace walls ten or fifteen feet thick, which were panelled with the slabs of sculptured alabaster. For such sun-dried bricks, clay and water form a sufficient cement. Building with mud-bricks, which indeed suits the climate well, goes on in these countries as of old. They were used also in America, and to this day the traveller in such districts as Mexico will often find himself lodged in a house built of them. The sun-dried brick is there called adobe, a word which is actually their ancient Egyptian name tob, which when adopted into Arabic became with the article, at-tob, and thence was adopted into Spanish as adobe. Baked bricks seem to have been a later invention, easy enough to nations who baked earthen pots, but only wanted in more rainy climates. Thus the Romans, whom mere mud-bricks would not have suited, carried to great perfection the making of kiln-burnt bricks and tiles.

For ordinary house-building, we now have recourse to the mason or bricklayer to build the walls, and tiles or slates are an improvement on the old thatch. But we so far keep to the old wooden architecture, that the floors and the timbering of the roof are still wood-work. For tombs and temples, however, built to last for ages, means were early wanted of roofing over spaces with the bricks or stones themselves without trusting to wooden beams. There are two modes of doing this, the false arch and the real arch, which are both ancient. The false arch is an arrangement which would occur to any builder, in fact it is what children make in building with wooden bricks, when they set them overlapping more and more till the top ones come near enough for one brick to cover the gap. Passages and chambers roofed in like this with projecting blocks of stone may be seen in the pyramids of Egypt, in ancient tombs of Greece and Italy, in the ruined palaces of Central America; and thus are built the domes of the Jain temples in India. It does not follow that the architects were ignorant of the real arch; they may have objected to it from its tendency to thrust the walls out. It is not known exactly how and when the arch was invented, but the idea might present itself even in roofing over doorways with rough stones. In the tombs of ancient Egypt real arches are to be seen, constructed in mud-bricks, or later in stone, by architects who quite understood the principle. Yet though the arch was known in what we call ancient times, it was not at once accepted by the world. It is remarkable that the Greek architects of the classic period never took to it. It was left to the Romans, who applied it with admirable skill, and from whose vaulted roofs, bridges, and domes, those of the mediæval and modern world are derived.

In thus looking over the architecture of the world, we see that its origins lie too far back for history to record its beginning and earliest progress. Still there is reason to believe that, in architecture as in other arts, man began with the simple and easy before he came on to the complex and difficult. There are many signs of stone architecture having grown out of an earlier wooden architecture. Thus on looking at the Lykian tombs in the entrance-hall of the British Museum, it will be seen that though they are of hewn stone, their forms are copied from wooden beams and joists, so that the mason shows by his very patterns that he has taken the place of an earlier carpenter. Even in the early stone-work of Egypt, traces of wooden forms are to be seen. In India there are stone buildings whose columns and architraves are not less plainly copied from wooden posts, and horizontal beams resting on them. It is possible that when men first took to setting up stone columns and supporting stone blocks upon them, this idea may have come into their minds from the wooden posts and beams they had been used to. But when it is said, as it often has been, that the porticos of Greek temples are copies in stone of older wooden structures, practical architects object that the Parthenon is not really like carpenter’s work. Indeed it is known that the Greeks did not invent their own column-architecture, but taking the idea of it from what they saw in Egypt and other countries, carried it out according to their own genius.

After dwellings, we come to examine clothing. It has first to be noticed that some low tribes, especially in the tropical forests of South America, have been found by travellers living quite naked. But even among the rudest of our race, and in hot districts where clothing is of least practical use, something is generally worn, either from ideas of decency or for ornament. Where little or no clothing is worn, it is common to paint the body. The Andaman islanders, who plaster themselves with a mixture of lard and coloured earth, have a practical reason for so doing, this coat of paint protecting their skin from heat and mosquitos; but they go off into love of display when they proceed to draw lines on the paint with their fingers, or when a dandy will colour one side of his face red, and the other olive-green, and make an ornamental border-line where the two colours meet down his chest and stomach. Among the relics of the ancient cave-men of Europe are hollowed stones, which were their primitive mortars for grinding the ochre and other colours for painting themselves. Indeed, few habits mark the lower stages of human life so well as the delight in body-patterns of bold spots and stripes in striking colours, familiar to us in pictures of Australians dancing at a corroboree, or Americans working themselves up to frenzy in the scalp-dance. The primitive sign of mourning also makes its appearance where savage mourners blacken (or whiten) themselves over. In the higher civilization, faded beauties may still make a poor attempt to revive youthful bloom with touches of red and white. But the ancient war-paint is now looked down on as a sign of utter barbarism; so much so that the ancient Britons, though a nation of considerable civilization, have been treated by many historians as mere savages because they kept up this rude practice, as Cæsar says, staining themselves blue with woad, and so being of horrider aspect in war. Among ourselves the guise which was so terrific in the Red Indian warrior has come down to make the circus-clown a pattern of folly. It is very likely that his paint-striped face may represent a fashion come down from the ancient times when paint was worn by the barbarians of Europe, much as in Japan actors paint their faces with bright streaks of red, doubtless keeping up what was once an ordinary decoration. When the skin is tattooed, the chief purpose of this is no doubt beauty, as where the New Zealander had himself covered with patterns of curved lines such as he would adorn his club or his canoe with; it was considered shameful for a woman not to have her mouth tattooed, for people would say with disgust “she has red lips.” Tattooing prevails as widely among the lower races of the world as painting, and the fashionable designs range from a few blue lines on the face or arms, up to the flower-patterns with which the skins of the Formosans are covered like damask. Where the art is carried to perfection as in Polynesia, the skin is punctured, and the charcoal-colour introduced, by tapping rows of little prickers. But a rougher mode is common, as in Australia or Africa, where gashes are made and wood-ashes rubbed in so that the wound heals in a knob or a ridge. Marks on the skin often serve other purposes than ornament, as in Africa, where a long scar on a man’s thigh may mean that he has done valiantly in battle, or the tribe or nation a negro belongs to may be indicated by his mark, for instance, a pair of long cuts down both cheeks, or a row of raised pimples down his forehead to the tip of his nose. Higher up in civilization, tattooing still lasts on, as where Arab women will slightly touch up their faces, arms, or ankles with the needle, and our sailors amuse themselves with having an anchor or a ship in full sail done with gunpowder on their arms, but in this last case the original purpose is lost, for the picture is hidden under the sleeve. Naturally, as clothing comes more and more to cover the body, the primitive skin-decorations cease, for what is the use of adorning oneself out of sight?

The head is frequently cropped or shaved close as a sign of mourning. Some tribes thus go bald always, like the Andaman islanders; or let the hair grow in tonsure-fashion in a ring round the shaved crown, like the Coroado (that is, “crowned”) Indians of Brazil; or wear a shaven head with a long scalp-lock or pigtail like the North American Indians, or the Manchus of Tartary, from whom the modern Chinese have adopted this habit. A curious mode of twisting the hair with strips of bark into hundreds of long thin ringlets is seen in the portraits of natives of Lepers’ Island, Fig. 66.

Various tribes grind their front teeth to points, or cut them away in angular patterns, so that in Africa and elsewhere a man’s tribe is often known by the cut of his teeth. Long finger-nails are noticed even among ourselves as showing that the owner does no manual labour, and in China and neighbouring countries they are allowed to grow to a monstrous length as a symbol of nobility, ladies wearing silver cases to protect them, or at least as a pretence that they are there (see the portraits of Siamese actresses in royal dress, Fig. 32). Or the nails may be let to grow as a sign that the wearer leads a religious life, and does no worldly work, as in the accompanying figure of the hand of a Chinese ascetic, Fig. 67.

As any nation’s idea of beauty is apt to be according to the type of their own race, they like to see their distinctive features exaggerated. Looking at a Hottentot face, Fig. 12 c, one understands why the mothers would squeeze the babies’ snub noses yet further in, while in ancient times a little Persian prince would have a bold aquiline nose shaped for him, to come like Fig. 11 b. In all quarters of the globe is found the custom of compressing infants’ heads by bandages and pads to make the little plastic skull grow to an approved shape. But as to what that shape ought to be, tastes differ extremely. In the Columbia River district, some Flathead tribes will so flatten out the forehead that their front faces look like a pear with the large end uppermost, while neighbouring tribes press in the upper part of the skull so that their faces look like the pear with the small end up. Hippokrates, the ancient physician, mentions the artificially deformed skulls of the Makrokephali or “long-heads” of the Black Sea district. The genuine Turkish skull is of the broad Tatar form, while the nations of Greece and Asia Minor have oval skulls, which gives the reason why at Constantinople it became the fashion to mould the babies’ skulls round, so that they grew up with the broad head of the conquering race. Relics of such barbarism linger on in the midst of civilization, and not long ago a French physician surprised the world by the fact that nurses in Normandy were still giving the children’s heads a sugar-loaf shape by bandages and a tight cap, while in Brittany they preferred to press it round. No doubt they are doing so to this day.

The propensity to beautify the body with ornaments belongs to human nature as low down as we can follow it. In South America the naked people were adorned with rings on legs and arms, and one tribe had as their only apparel a macaw’s feather stuck in a hole at each corner of their mouths, and strings of shells hanging from their noses, ears, and under-lips. This latter case is a good example of the ornaments being fastened into the body, which is pierced or cut to receive them. Various tribes wear labrets or lip-ornaments, some gradually enlarging the hole through the under-lip till it will take a wooden plug two or three inches across, as in the portrait (Fig. 68) of a woman of the Botocudos, a Brazilian tribe who owe their name to this labret, which the Portuguese compared to a botoque or bung. Ear-ornaments, as the figure shows, are put in the same way in the lobe of the ear, which they stretch so that when the disc of wood is taken out it falls in a loop and even reaches the shoulder. Thus it is possible that there may be some truth in the favourite wonder-tale of the old geographers, about the tribes whose great ears reached down to their shoulders, though the story had to be stretched a good deal farther when it was declared that they lay down on one ear and covered themselves with the other for a blanket. The great interest to us in these savage ornaments is in the tendency of higher civilization to give them up. In Persia one still finds the nose-ring through one side of a woman’s nostril, but European taste would be shocked by this, though it allows the ear to be pierced to carry an ear-ring. As to ornaments which are merely put on, they are mostly feathers, flowers, or trinkets worn in the hair, or strung-ornaments or rings on the neck, arms, and legs. In what remote times man had begun to take pleasure in such decorations may be seen by the periwinkle-shells bored for stringing found in the cave of Cro-Magnon, which no doubt made necklaces and bracelets for the girls of the mammoth-period. In the modern world necklaces and bracelets remain in unchanged use, though anklets, such as the bangles of the Hindu dancing-girl, have of course disappeared from the costume of civilized wearers of shoes and stockings. It would not suit our customs to keep an affectionate memory of dead relatives by wearing their finger and toe bones strung as beads, as the Andaman women do, but our ladies keep in fashion barbaric necklaces of such things as shells, seeds, tigers’ claws, and especially polished stones. The wearing of shining stones as ornaments lasts on, whether they have come to be precious pearls or rubies, or glass beads which are imitation stones. Where metal becomes known it at once comes into use for ornament, and this reaches its height where amused travellers describe some Dayak girl with her arms sheathed in a coil of stout brass wire, or some African belle whose great copper rings on her limbs get so hot in the sun that an attendant carries a water-pot to sluice them down now and then. To see gold jewelry of the highest order, the student should examine that of the ancients, such as the Egyptian, Greek, and Etruscan in the British Museum, and that of mediæval Europe. The art seems now to have passed its prime, and become a manufacture, of which the best products are imitations from the antique. The cutting of precious stones such as diamonds into facets is, however, a modern art. As to finger-rings, if their use arose out of the signet-rings of Egypt and Babylon, then the few which are still engraved as seals keep up the original idea, while those which only carry pearls or diamonds have turned into mere ornaments.

To come now to clothing proper. The man who wants a garment gets it in the simplest way when he takes the covering off a tree or a beast, and puts it on himself. The bark of trees provides clothes for rude races in many districts, as for instance in the curious use which natives of the Brazilian forests have long made of the so-called “shirt-tree” (lecythis). A man cuts a four or five feet length of the trunk, or a large branch, and gets the bark off in an entire tube, which he has then only to soak and beat soft and to cut slits for armholes, to be able to slip it on as a ready-made shirt; or a short length will make a woman’s skirt. The wearing of bark has sometimes been kept up as a sign of primitive simplicity. Thus in India it is written in the laws of Manu that when the grey-haired Brahman retires into the forest to end his days in religious meditation, he shall wear a skin or a garment of bark. A ruder people, the Kayans of Borneo, while in common life they like the smart foreign stuffs of the trader, when they go into mourning throw them off and return to the rude native garment of bark-cloth. In Polynesia the manufacture of tapa from the bark of the paper-mulberry was carried to great perfection, the women beating it out with grooved clubs into a sort of vegetable felt, and ornamenting it with coloured patterns stamped on. The people were delighted with the white paper of the Europeans, and dressed themselves in it as a fine variety of tapa, till they found that the first shower of rain spoilt it. Leaves, also, are made into aprons or skirts which clothe various rude tribes. Not only are there “leaf-wearers” in India, but at a yearly festival in Madras the whole low-caste population cast off their ordinary clothing, and put on aprons of leafy twigs.

The skin garments worn by the savages of the ancient world have rotted away these many thousand years, but we may see how generally they used to be worn, by the vast numbers of skin-dressing implements of sharp stone (see Fig. 54, c), found in the ground. Till lately the Patagonians, when they came on their journeys to a place where suitable flint or obsidian was to be found, would load themselves with a supply of lumps to chip into these primitive currier’s scrapers. Savages, that their fur robes or deer-skin shirts should not dry stiff, know how to dress the leather skilfully by such processes as rubbing in fat or marrow, and suppling with the hands; they also smoke it, to keep. Thus the North Americans know how to prepare deer-skin for garments into something like what we call chamois leather. But it hardly seems as though the lower races had taught themselves the process of actual tanning with bark or galls, where the tannic acid forms in the substance of the skin insoluble compounds which resist change for ages, so that the beautiful cut and embossed work in tanned leather from ancient Egypt may still be seen perfectly preserved in our museums. In such riding countries as Mexico, suits of leather are still worn, while in Europe the buff jerkin and the huntsman’s buckskins are disappearing; but it is still everywhere acknowledged that there is nothing like leather for covering the feet. In wearing furs, our height of luxury keeps curiously close to the savage fashion of the primitive world.

Plaiting and matting are arts of such simplicity that they are known to savages. In hot countries matting is convenient for dress, as when South Sea Islanders make gowns of plaited grass, and the old art still provides the civilized world with hats and bonnets of straw or chip. Next, if we pull a scrap of woven cloth to pieces, we see that it is in fact a piece of matting done with thread. Therefore, to understand weaving, we have to begin with the making of string or thread. All mankind can twist string, but some tribes do it in a far lower way than we are accustomed to. They take vegetable fibre, wool or hair, and twist it by rolling between their flat palms, or with one hand on the thigh. It is quite worth the reader’s while to try to imitate this process, by twisting two strands of tow, and then rolling these into one with the reverse movement. At any rate he will find how much practice he would take to do it as cleverly as the Australians when they have the women’s hair cut to furnish a supply of fishing-lines, or the New Zealanders when they run out a handful of native flax by inches into a neat and perfect cord. But the higher nations use a mechanical contrivance, the spindle, for thread-making, and the question is how this came to be invented. Fig. 69 shows what may have happened. At a is figured a cross-stick, forming a simple reel or winder, on which the Australians wind their hair-string just mentioned. Now if it had occurred to one of these savages to secure his thread by drawing it into a split at the end of the stick, he might have seen that by giving the hanging reel a twirl he could make it twist a new strand for him much faster than he could do between his hands. The Australian never saw how to do this. But looking at b in the figure, which represents an ancient Egyptian woman spinning, it is evident that such a spindle as she is working with may have been invented by turning a mere reel to this new use. Such spindles were known over the ancient civilized world, and among the commonest objects dug up near old dwellings are the spindle-whorls of stone or terra-cotta, like great buttons, which with a stick through the middle formed the whole simple implement. Spindles may still be seen in the hands of peasant women in Italy or Switzerland. The spinning-wheel of the middle ages was a little machine to drive a spindle, and the spinning-frames in factories show the ancient instrument worked with still more modern improvements, a hundred spindles in a row being driven rapidly by steam-power, and all tended by a single operative.

The next point is how people provided with thread or yarn taught themselves to weave it into cloth. As has just been said, cloth is a sort of matting made with threads, but as these cannot be held stiff like rushes, a number of them may be stretched in a frame to form a warp, and then the cross-thread or woof worked in and out with the fingers, or on a stick, as the Mexican girl is doing in Fig. 70. This toilsome method still suits the difficult patterns of the tapestry-weaver. But time-saving contrivances were invented very early. The ancient Egyptian pictures already show the alternate threads of the warp being lifted by cross-bars, so as to allow the woof-thread carried by a shuttle to be sent right across the piece of cloth at one throw. The looms of classic Greece and Rome were much the same, and little improvement was made in the machine during the middle ages. Indeed in out-of-the-way places such as the Hebrides, the tourist may still see the old cottage-loom which, except in being horizontal so that the weaver sits to it instead of standing, hardly differs from the loom at which Penelope may be imagined weaving the famous shroud that she undid at night. Only about a century ago improvement began again, when the “flying shuttle” was invented, which instead of being thrown by hand, was driven swiftly across by a pair of levers or artificial arms. Of late years this improved loom has passed into the power-loom, the steam-engine now doing the hard labour instead of the weaver’s hands and feet. The ingenious device of the Jacquard loom with its perforated cards arranging the threads, has made it possible to weave even landscapes and portraits.

The primitive tailor or “cutter” (tailleur) had not only to cut his skin or bark into shape, but to join pieces by means of sinew or thread. This art of sewing makes its appearance among savages, and is seen in its rudest form among the Fuegians who pierce their guanaco-skins with a pointed bone, push the thread through, and make a tie at each hole. Among tribes who have only such bone awls, or stiff thorns, to work with, sewing cannot get beyond the shoemaker’s fashion of first making a row of holes and then pushing and pulling the thread through. But bone needles with eyes are found in the reindeer-caves of France, so that possibly the seamstresses of the mammoth-period may already have known how to stitch and embroider their soft skins. When the metal-period began, bronze needles came into use such as are to be seen in museums, and in modern times the fine steel needles have become an example how finish and cheapness may be gained by division of labour, one set of workpeople being entirely occupied in grinding the points, another in drilling the eyes, and so on. But the sewing-needle is still in principle that of the ancient world, and hand-sewing, after holding its place for thousands of years, has suddenly had to compete with the work of the new sewing-machine, which runs its more rapid seams in a mechanically different way.

Next, as to the shape of garments. If we knew of no costume but what we commonly wear now, we might think it more a product of mere fancy than it really is. But on looking carefully at the dresses of various nations, it is seen that most garments are variations of a few principal kinds, each made for a particular purpose in clothing the body. The simplest and no doubt earliest garments are wraps wound or hung on the body, and by noticing how these are worn it may be guessed how they led to the later use of garments fitted to the wearer’s shape. To begin with the simplest mantles, a skin or blanket with a hole through the middle forms a ready-made garment of the poncho kind. When one throws a rug or blanket over one’s shoulders, it becomes a garment which requires fastening in front, or on one shoulder, to leave the arm free. This fastening may be done with a thorn or bone pin, the primitive brooch, that is, “skewer” (French broche); we now use the word brooch to mean the more civilized metal pin with a safety-clasp, the Latin fibula or “fixer.” Now if one stands thus draped in a blanket or sheet, one has only to raise the arms to show how naturally sleeves came to be made by sewing together under the arms. Next, putting the blanket over the head and holding it under the chin, it is seen how the part over the head will make a hood, which can be thrown back when not wanted. When it was found convenient to make the hood separate, there arose various kinds of head-covering, whose baggy shape often shows their origin, for instance the pointed “fool’s-cap.” When the mantle thrown over the shoulders is short, it forms the cape or cope; when long, it becomes the cloak, which owes its name to its likeness to a bell (French cloche). For convenience, many varieties of the mantle are cut into shape, as for instance the toga in which the ancient Roman draped himself was rounded off. But ever since the invention of weaving, certain garments have been worn just as they came from the loom, such as the Scotch plaid, and that ancient Eastern wrapper which we still know by its Persian name of shawl (shâl). Such woven garments are apt to keep a mark of their origin in the fringe, which in its original form is the ends of the warp-threads left on by the weaver, and when these threads are tied together in bundles they give rise to tassels. Another great group of garments are tunics, seen in a simple form in the chiton of ancient Greek female dress, which has been compared to a linen sack open at both ends, and was held up by a brooch on each shoulder, leaving openings for the arms. The tunic, closed at the shoulders and generally provided with sleeves, is the most universal of civilized garments, whether worn hanging loose like a shirt, or drawn in at the waist by a girdle or belt. In its various forms it is seen as the tunic of the Roman legionary and the “red shirt” of the Garibaldian volunteer, the coat of the mediæval noble, the smock-frock of the English peasant, the blouse of the French workman, and lastly, it led to our modern coats and waistcoats, which are tunics made to open in front and close with buttons. One of the great steps in personal cleanliness and therefore in culture made by our forefathers, was the adoption of a linen tunic next the skin, the “short” garment, or shirt. Again, a piece of cloth wrapped round the body and held up by a girdle forms the skirt or kilt, and the way in which Eastern women fasten their skirts together between the feet for convenience of walking, shows how trousers were invented. Many ancient nations wore trousers, as the Sarmatians, whose modern-looking costume may be seen on Trajan’s column, and the Gauls and Britons, so that it is a mistake to call the present Highland costume the “garb of old Gaul.” The classic Greeks and Romans looked on the braccæ or breeches as belonging to barbarism, but their opinion has not been accepted by the civilized world.

These remarks may lead readers to look attentively into books of costume, which indeed are full of curious illustrations of the way in which things are not invented outright by mere fancy, but come by gradual alterations of what was already there. To account for our present absurd “chimney-pot” hat, we must see how it came by successive changes from the conical Puritan hat and the slouched Stuart hat, and these again from earlier forms. The sense of the hat-band must be found in its once having been a real cord to draw in the mere round piece of felt which was the primitive hat; and to understand why our hat is covered with silk nap, it must be remembered that this is an imitation of the earlier beaver-fur hat, which would stand rain. Even the now useless seams and buttons on modern clothes (see page 15) are bits of past history.

This chapter may be concluded with an account of boats and ships. He who first, laying hold of a floating bough, found it would bear him up in the water, had made a beginning in navigation. Naturally, history has kept no record of the origin of such an art. Yet the rudest forms of floats, rafts, and boats, may still be seen in use among savages, and even the civilized traveller coming to a stream or lake may be glad to make shift with a log or a bundle of bulrushes to help him across, and carry his gun and clothes over dry. Comparing these rough-and-ready means with the contrivances made with skill and care for permanent use, a fair idea may be had of the stages through which the shipwrights’ art grew up.

The mere float comes lowest, as where a South Sea Island child goes into the water with an unhusked coco-nut to hold on by; or a Hottentot will swim his goats across the river, supporting his body by sprawling on one end of a drift-log of willow, which he calls his “wooden-horse.” Australians have been known to come out to our ships sitting astride logs pointed at the ends, and paddling with their hands, while native fishermen of California will sit on a bundle of rushes tied up in the shape of a sailor’s hammock. Rude as these are, they at any rate show that the makers have noticed the advantage which the craft with a sharp bow has over the blunt-ended log in getting through the water. In all quarters of the globe, men improve on the float by making it hollow for buoyancy; it thus becomes a boat. One way of doing this is to scoop out a log. Any one who happens to have been up country in America may have paddled himself in such a “dug-out” across a pond or river; and after experience of the care required to keep a cylinder from rolling over in the water, he will know how great an improvement it was in boat-building when a keel was put on to steady the craft. To savages with their stone hatchets, the hollowing out of a log is a laborious business when the wood is of a hard kind, and they are apt to use fire to help them, setting the tree-trunk alight along the proper line and hacking away the burning wood. Columbus was struck with the size of such vessels made by the natives of the West Indies, mentioning in his letters many canoes of solid wood, “multas scaphas solidi ligni,” some so large as to hold seventy to eighty rowers. The Spaniards adopted their Haitian name canoa, whence our canoe. Yet this dug-out, or monoxyle (“one-tree”), to use its Greek name, was well known in other barbaric countries, and had been common in Europe in ages before history, as may be seen by the specimens in museums, preserved by the peat or sand in which they were found imbedded. Even the Latin word scapha, used above, carries the record of this early boat-building; it is Greek skaphē, which corresponds so exactly in meaning to the term “dug-out,” as to be an evident relic of the time when boats were really scooped out of solid trunks; related to these words are English skiff and ship, so that the line of connexion in names runs through from first to last. Another very simple way of making a boat is that seen among the Australians, where a man will strip a sheet of bark off the stringy-bark tree, tie it together at the ends, and paddle off in this improvised bark-canoe. If, however, it is to be used more than once, he sews the ends together, and puts in stretchers or cross-pieces of wood to keep it in shape. Thus appears the bark-canoe, not unknown in Asia and Africa, and attaining in North America its greatest perfection, with its framework of cedar and sheathing of sheets of birch-bark sewed together with fibrous cedar-roots. Such canoes are still in full use in districts like the Hudson’s Bay territory, being well suited to a broken navigation where rapids make it needful to carry boat and cargo overland, or a “portage” has to be made from one river to another. The principle of skin-canoes is much the same, using hide for bark. North American Indians crossing rivers have been known to turn the skins of their tents into vessels by means of a few twigs to keep them stretched. Scarcely above this are the round skin-covered boats of boughs of Mesopotamia, and the portable coracles of the ancient Britons; on the Severn and the Shannon fishermen still go down to the river carrying on their backs their coracles, now made of tarred canvas on a frame, but modelled on the ancient type. The Esquimaux kayak has its framework of bone or drift-wood on which are stretched the seal-skins which convert it into a water-tight life-buoy, in which the skin-clad paddler can even turn over sideways and bring his boat up right on the other side. Our modern so-called canoes are imitations of this in wood.

Next, when the barbaric shipwright comes to improving a dug-out canoe by sewing or lacing on a strip of thin board as a gunwale, or making his whole boat by sewing thin boards together over the ribs, instead of skins or sheets of bark, he brings his vessel a stage nearer to our boats. From Africa across to the Malay Archipelago, such sewn ships used to be, and often still are, the ordinary native craft. The South Sea Island canoes, thus laced together with sinnet or coco-nut fibre braid so neatly that the joints hardly show, are marvels of barbaric carpentry. In the gulf of Oman, men used to go across to the coco-nut islands with their tools, cut down a few palms, make the wood into planks, sew these together with cord made from the bark, make sails of the leaves, load the new-made ships with the nuts, and set sail.

Before coming to the ships of civilized nations, let us look back for a moment to the ruder floats. Two or three logs fastened together form a raft, which though clumsy to move has the advantage of not upsetting, and carrying a heavy load. At the time of the discovery of Peru, the Spaniards were amazed to meet with a native raft out in the ocean, and with a sail set. The rafts which bring goods down the Euphrates and Tigris are buoyed with blown sheepskins; at the end of the voyage the raft is broken up and the wood sold, so that only the empty skins have to go back to serve another time. With still more perfect economy, the rafts down the Nile are buoyed with earthen pots for sale in the bazar, so that nothing goes back. Timber-rafts, like those on the Rhine, are well arranged for merely floating down stream. But when a raft has to be driven through the water by oars or sails, its resistance is excessive, and it has occurred to the Fijians and other islanders that a raft formed by two parallel logs united by cross-poles and carrying a raised platform, would go more easily. Looking at this simple contrivance, it has been reasonably thought that it led up to the invention of the outrigger canoe, known in ancient Europe, and now prevailing in the Pacific and as far as Ceylon. One of the two logs is now represented by the canoe, the second remaining as the outrigger log, fastened to the ends of the two projecting poles, so as to steady the whole in rough weather. Or indeed the two logs may both become canoes, and the platform be retained; thus we have the Polynesian double-canoe, whose principle has been lately turned to account in the double-steamboat to smooth the passage between Dover and Calais.

Next, as to the ways by which boats are propelled through the water. The origin of rowing is plainly shown by the Australian straddling his pointed log and paddling with his hands, or by the fisherman of the Upper Nile propelling with his feet the bundle of stalks he sits astride on. The primitive wooden paddle, imitating the form and doing the work of the flat hand or foot, is well known to savages, who mostly use the single paddle with a blade or shovel end; the double-ended paddle, such as our canoeists have borrowed from the Esquimaux, is a peculiar improved form. The paddle used free-handed to dig or sweep at the water, is best suited to the narrow bark-canoe or hollowed trunk, but for larger craft it is a rude contrivance as compared with the civilized oar, which is a lever pulled against a fulcrum so as to use more of the rower’s force, and in a steadier pull. The difference between barbaric and civilized knowledge of mechanical principles, is well seen by comparing a large South Sea Island canoe with twenty paddlers shovelling the water, to one of our eight-oared launches. Of sails, perhaps the simplest idea is to be seen in Catlin’s sketch of North American Indians standing up each in his canoe, holding up his blanket with outstretched arms with its lower end tied to his leg, and so going before the wind. The rudest regular sail used anywhere is a mat or cloth held up by two sticks as stays at the upper corners and made fast below, or supported by an upright pole and cross-piece, the primitive mast and yard. It is so common for the lower tribes of men never to sail their boats, that it is difficult to imagine that their ancestors ever knew how. Surely they would have kept it up, for the art of saving so much labour with so little pains would not easily have fallen out of mind. It seems more likely that the invention of the sailing vessel belongs to a period when civilization was far advanced. Yet this period was very ancient.