Fire-engines emj:loyed in Ancient T Vm\t.

303

Chap. 7.]

bors has reached our times. It seems exceedingly probable that somekind of fire-engines were used in the celebrated cities of remote antiquity—in Nineveh , Tyre, Babylon and others. It is scarcely possible that theTyrian and Babylonian mechanicians, whose inventive talents and skillwere proverbial, should have left their splendid cities destitute of suchmeans for preserving them from the ravages of fire. If the great extentof Babylon, for example, be considored, its location, (on an extensive plain,)the length of its streets, (fifteen miles,) the height of its buildings, (threeand four stories,) and its unrivaled wealth, together with the heat anddryness of the climate; the necessity of such machines will be apparent,and what appears necessary to us, we may rest assured, appeared equallyso to its mechanicians, and that they were quite as capable of providingby their ingenuity for the emergency. Nor are we left wholly to conjec-ture respecting their knowledge of hydraulic or pneumatic machinery,since the most memorable machine for raising water in the ancient worldwas made and used at Babylon, and one which, as has been elsewhereobserved, greatly exceeded in the elevation to which it raised it, all, ornearly all the water-works of modern days. Had they engines like oursthen 1 We dare not say they had, although we see nothing improbablein the opinion : the antiquity of the syringe is unquestionable; and its ap -plication to project water on flames must have been as obvious in remoteas in present times ; and people would as naturally be led then as now,to construct large ones for that purpose.

There are other reasons for believing that syringes or pumps for squirt-ing water on fires were in use previous to the time they are first mention-ed in history. Fire was one of the most common and most destructiveagents employed in ancient wars. When a city was besieged or assaulted,it was the first object with the assailants to protect the moving towers, inwhich their battering engines , &c . approached the Walls, from being con-sumed by fire, oil and pitch, &c. thrown upon them from the ramparts.Every source was examined that ingenuity could unfold, for materials anddevices to protect them; and as not only the lives and property of the in-habitants, but often the destinies of armies and even of nations were onsuch occasions at stäke, it is reasonable to conclude that the most perfectapparatus which could then be procured, were employed both for destroy-ing buildings by fire, and also for preserving them from it. We knowthat men were specially trained to fire buildings, and that they were ex-pert in their profession, especially in shooting lighted arrows and dartsinto and upon structures that could not be approached; hence the neces-sity of devices for throwing water upon these missiles and the places in-flamed by them. There is an allusion to both practices in the Epistle tothe Ephesians, vi, 16. Such a System of warfare could never have beencarried to the extent that it was, and for so many ages too, among the cele-brated nations of old, without forcing pumps or something like them beingused to squirt water on such parts as could not be reached by it whenthrown from the hand. We cannot conceive how the constant repetitionof one army applying its energies to the destruction of another by meansof fire, and the latter equally intent on devising and applying means toextinguish it, without the application of the syringe and of machines on theprinciple of the bellows occurring to them—an application so obvious(even then) that the slightest mental elfort to produce a contrivance forthe purpose could not have overlooked it, even if the occasions were oflittle moment, much less, when the inventive powers of armies, and ofmilitary engineers in particular, were engaged in the research, and the fateof nations depended upon the result. From a remark in one of Pliny ’s