We are very proud in our day of our means of transportation. If one wishes to send a present to a friend a thousand miles away a few cents spent in postage will take the article to its destination. If for the sake of higher prices a fruit grower wishes to sell his crops in a distant city, the railroad people will haul it for him at a very small cost. If you wish to visit a friend in town several blocks away, there is the electric car ready to take you for a nickel. If your friend is several hundred miles away, the steam car will take you in a few hours at a cost of not more than two or three cents a mile. I am living in the country sixteen miles from the city in which my work lies, and for nine cents I am carried to the place of my business in less than half-an-hour. What has been the history of the inventions which make transportation so comfortable, rapid and cheap? Our subject divides itself into two parts, transportation on land and transportation on water or the story of the Carriage and the story of the Boat. We will have the story of the carriage first.

Man's only carriage at first was of course his own feet. When he wanted to go to any place he had to take "Walker's hack," if a playful expression may be pardoned. As a traveler on foot, man soon surpassed all other animals. He could walk down the deer and wear out the horse. When it came to carrying things from place to place, in the beginning he had to rely upon his own limbs and muscles. It was not long, however, before he learned that there were good ways and bad ways of carrying things, and he soon set about finding the best way. We may believe that he began by making a snug bundle and carrying it on his shoulder. Then he found that he could carry a heavier burden upon his back, and he invented a pack or frame on which he could carry things on his back (Fig. 1) after the manner of one of our modern pack peddlers.

In the course of time man tamed one or more of the wild beasts which roamed near him. Then the burden was shifted from the back of a man to the back of a beast. The first beast of burden in South America was the llama; in India it was the elephant; in Arabia it was the camel (Fig. 2). In Europe and in parts of Asia and in Egypt the horse first became man's burden bearer and the nations which had the services of this swift and strong animal outstripped the other nations of the world. "Which is the most useful of animals?" asked one Egyptian god of another. "The horse," was the reply, "because the horse enables a man to overtake and slay his enemy."

It is often easier to drag a thing along than it is to carry it. This fact led to the invention of what we may call the first and simplest form of carriage. This was the drag or travail (tra-vay´), a cart without wheels (Fig. 3). Two long saplings were fastened at the large end to the strap across the horse's breast and the small end upon which the burden was placed dragged upon the ground. Mr. Arthur Mitchell in his delightful book, "The Past in the Present," tells us that he saw carts of this kind in actual use in the highlands of Scotland as late as 1864! An improvement upon the travail was the sledge made of the forked limb of a tree (Fig. 4). This primitive sledge was really a travail consisting of one piece.

In many cases it is easier to roll a thing than it is to drag it. This fact led to another step in the development of the carriage; it led from the cart without wheels to a cart with a wheel—a most important step in the history of inventions. The first wheeled cart was simply a log from each end of which projected an axle (Fig. 5). The axle fitted in the holes of a frame upon which the body of the cart was placed and to which the horse or the ox was attached. As the cart moved along, wheel (log and axle) turned together. The very ancient method of moving a load by rolling it along was in use in the United States not so very long ago. As late as 1860 in some of the southern States hogsheads of tobacco (Fig. 6) were rolled over country roads in the manner just described and as late as 1880 the fishermen of Nantucket used as a fish cart a vehicle that had only a barrel for its wheel. (Fig. 7.) The common wheel-barrow and the one-wheeled carts which are still used in China and Japan had their origin in the rolling log.

We are told by some writers that the rolling log (the one-wheeled cart) was followed by the two-wheeled cart, on which the wheels were the ends of a log and the axle was the middle portion of the log hewn down to a proper size (Fig. 8). Here wheels and axle turned together precisely like a modern car wheel. This makes a very pretty story but I am afraid the solid two-wheeled affair represented in Figure 8 is only imaginary, and that in a true account of the development of the cart it has no place. The true beginning of the two-wheeled cart may be learned from Figure 9. Here the wheels are two very short logs through the center of which are holes in which the round ends (axles) of a piece of timber (the axle-tree) fit. When the cart moves, the wheels turn upon the axle. The one-wheeled cart had at first one log turning with the axle; the two-wheeled cart at first had as its wheels two very short logs turning on the axles.

The first two-wheeled carts were a great improvement upon the single rolling log, yet they were exceedingly heavy and clumsy. The trouble was with the wheel. This was very thick and with the exception of the hole in which the axle went it was entirely solid. Wheelwrights at a very early date saw that the problem was to make the wheel light and at the same time to keep it strong. Little by little this problem was solved. At first crescent-shaped holes were made in the wheel (Fig. 10). This made the wheel lighter, but did not weaken it. In its next form the wheel was even less solid than before. It now consisted of four curved pieces of wood (Fig. 11) held together by four spokes. In this wheel there was a hub, but the spokes were not inserted in it; they were fastened about it. In the Egyptian chariot (Fig. 12) we find the wheel in the last stage of its interesting and remarkable development. Here the spokes, six in number, are inserted in the hub from which they radiate to the six pieces of the felly or inner rim. Around the felly is the outer rim or tire made of wood and fastened to the felly with thongs. The wheel of to-day has more iron in it, and has more spokes and is lighter and stronger than the old Egyptian wheel, yet in its main features it is made like it.

A light running two-wheeled carriage was used by all the civilized nations of the ancient world. Three thousand years ago in the great and wicked city of Nineveh chariots raced up and down the paved streets "jostling against one another in the broad ways, with the crack of the whip, the rattle of the wheel and the prancing of horses." The chariot played an important part in the life of the Greeks and Romans, in their racing contests and in their wars, and throughout the Middle Ages it was the only vehicle in general use in Europe. As time passed it was of course made lighter and stronger and better. The doctor's gig so charmingly described by Holmes in his "Wonderful One Hoss Shay" may be taken as an illustration of the full development of the two-wheeled carriage (Fig. 13).

Bring the hind part of one Egyptian chariot opposite to the hind part of another, lash the two chariots together, remove the tongue of one of the chariots and you have made a chariot of four wheels or a coach. The form of the most ancient of four-wheeled carriages leads to the belief that the coach was first made by joining together two two-wheeled chariots in the way just described. The ancient Egyptians had their four-wheeled chariots but only their gods and their kings had the privilege of riding in them. For centuries none but the great and the powerful rode in coaches. The Roman chariot (Fig. 14), bad imitations of which we see nowadays in circus processions, was used only in the splendid triumphal processions which entered Rome after a great victory. In the Middle Ages we get a glimpse of a four-wheeled carriage now and then, but usually the king or a queen is lounging in it (Fig. 15). The coach could not be generally used in Europe in medieval times because the roads were so bad. The excellent roads made by the Romans had not been kept in good condition. Traveling had to be done either on horseback or in the two-wheeled carriage. In 1550 there were but three coaches in Paris and in London there was but one. In 1564, however, we find Queen Elizabeth riding in a coach (Fig. 16) on her way to see her lover, Lord Leicester. Insert more spokes and lighter ones in the wheels of this coach of the queen's, put on rubber tires and mount the body on elliptical springs17 and we will have the coach of to-day.