Chain of Pots.

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Chap. 15.]

the chain of pots was included among the “ wheels and other engines,”by which the latter raised water from the sea and discharged it into thecisterns that supplied Csesar’s army with fresh water. It was most like-ly among the “ hydraulic engines,” which Herodotns observes the Baby-lonians had, to raise water from the Enphrates to irrigate their lands.These 1 engines’ were certainly similar to those of India , Egypt , Greece ,and other neighboring countries; for if they had been of novel construc-tion, or peculiar to Chaldea, he would scarcely have failed to notice soimportant a fact, if he even omitted (as he has) to describe them.

The same lack of discrimination is obvious in almost all the accountsof modern as of ancient authors, respecting this machine. When theyspeak of wheels for raising water, it is as difficult to ascertain those towhich they allude, as it is in the parallel passages of Philo and Diodorus ,Strabo and Caesar. Thus Tavernier in his passage down the Tigris toBagdat, remarks, “ all the day long, we saw nothing upon either side ofthe river, but pitiful huts, made of the branches of palm trees, where livecertain poor people that turn the wheels, by means whereof they waterthe neighboring ground.” Sometimes the chain of pots is mentioned bytravelers as the Persian wheel, and populär extracts from their workstend greatly to perplex enquirers into its history. When we met withStatements from Shaw’s travels, that the Persian wheel was extensivelyused on the banks of the Nile , through all Egypt , they were so much atvariance with the testimony of other oriental travelers, and so foreign toour impressions respecting the use of that machine in Egypt , that we hadimmediate reference to his work; when the apparent discrepancy wasexplained. He describes and figures the chain of pots (sakia) as thePersian wheels Norden commits the same error ; “ they likewise employthe Persian wheel with ropes of pitchers, which is turned by oxen.” bTwiss also describes the Spanish chain of pots as the Persian wheel, andwhich he observes is used “ all over Portugal , Spain , and the Levant.” c

Other travelers speak of it as the Noria . Mr. Jacob, in his “ Tra-vels in the South of Spain, ” Lon. 1811, page 152, says the Spaniards “ usea mill of Arabic origin, from which our chain pump is evidently derived;it is called a noria. A vertical wheel over a well has a series of earthenjars fastened together by cords of Esparto, which descend into the waterand fill themselves by the motion of the wheel. The vertical wheelis put in motion by a horizontal one, which is turned by a cow. Nomachine ean be more simple.” In the Grande Description of Egypt ,it is designated ‘ Roue a pots ,’ d instead of naming it from the chain,its peculiar and distinguishing feature. It certainly has nothing in com-mon with the noria,except the pots or vessels in which the water is raised;and these in the latter, are suspended from the arms of inflexible levers,and ascend in the arc of a circle ; while in both these circumstances, andothers might be named, there is no resemblance whatever between them.The chain of pots is generallv named by French authors, ‘ Chapelet, ’’ fromits resemblance to the string of beads, which Roman catholics , Mahome-tans, Budhists, &c. (like the Pagans of old) use in repeating their prayers.This appellation is sufEciently discriminating, and is appropriate ; certainlymore so than Roue a pots , since it serves to separate this machine fromevery species of wheels and to preserve a distinction between two verydifferent classes of hydraulic engines.

The chain of pots seems always to have been used to raise water from

“Travels, page 337. b Travels in Egypt and Nubia , Vol. i, 56.

c Travels through Portugal and Spain in 1772, and ’73. Lon. 1780, page 329.

ä Tom. 2. Memoirs, E. M. Plate 5.

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