Wood is a material so proper for building, that men would, in all ages, employ it for this purpose, in places where it could be easily procured. The branches of trees, stuck in the ground, and rudely interwoven, form ed a very convenient material for constructing huts ; and when daubed with clay, and covered over with leaves or turf, presented a model of those cabins, in which, ac cording to Vitruvius, the earliest tribes of men were contented to dwell, (1. 2. c. I.) If they had occasion to fell whole trees, they accomplished this, as the savages do at present, by the help of fire. They undermined them by little and little by torches or firebrands kept burning close to the tree ; and by the same means they could divide a tree into the requisite lengths. By de grees, however, tools for cutting and smoothing wood were invented ; which were at first nothing more than sharp stones, which were at the same time sufficiently hard, and free from brittleness. The greatest part of the American nations have no other tools for hewing wood to this clay.
The use of bricks, or masses of clay formed in moulds, and dried in the sun, or baked in stoves, as the materials of building, is of very great antiquity, and is a suffici ently obvious invention. According to Moses, the tower of Babel was built of bricks ; and in the most ancient ages, the Egyptians made use of bricks for building their houses, and tiles for covering them, 7.) To employ stones for the same purpose was exceeding ly natural, where they were abundant, and found in masses sufficiently small to be conveniently moved about.
While men continue in the hunting or pastoral states, they will not think of building very substantial habita tions : a slight hut, which may serve as an immediate shelter from the inelemencies of the weather, such as the wigwhams of the North American Indians, will be considered as enough for one who changes his place of residence with the change of the seasons. It was agri culture that gave birth to the construction of houses or a substantial and finished form, and to all the refine ments subsequently introduced in the architectural art. The assiduous cares and constant attendance which this way of life requires, are inconsistent with emigration from place to place, and oblige men to become stationa ry, by which they are induced to provide themselves with lasting and commodious habitations. In Chaldwa, where agriculture was speedily_ established after the flood, men soon began to dwell in cities. Moses has preserved the names of three, which were erected by Nimrod, (aelWx. 10.) ; and Assur, a short time after, founded in the same district Nineveh, and two other ci ties. In Palestine, in Egypt, and in other eastern coun
tries, there were cities from the most remote antiquity : though it is probable that the houses of these ancient cities were of very slight materials, and rude workman ship.
That solid buildings of hewn stone may be erected without the aid of the complicated machinery which we now employ, is proved by the example of the people of Mexico and Peru. When visited by the Spaniards, they had neither carts, sledges, nor beasts of burden ; but transported all their materials by mere manual labour. They knew nothing of scaffolds, cranes, or other ma chines proper for erecting buildings, and were even ig norant of the use of iron. Yet notwithstanding all this, they had the address to raise structures of stone, which are beheld with admiration even at the present day. Their mode of proceeding was, to break their stones with certain flints, which were very hard and black ; and •then to polish them by rubbing them against one another. Ulloa, t. I.
It is not improbable, that the same laborious and te dious method might have been employed in the struc tures of stone which were erected during the primitive ages. At any rate, the art of hewing stones, and building houses of them, is of very great antiquity ; and the same thing may be said of the use of lime and mortar. It seems to have originated in Egypt, where wood is very scarce, insomuch that the people of that country were obliged to supply their furnaces with straw and stubble, (E.rod. c. v. v. 7.) Building with stone was, therefore, in a manner necessary ; and accordingly was adopted in the very earliest ages. The upper part of Egypt abounds in fine marble ; and the Egyptians seem very early to have contrived methods of transporting this material with ease. Almost from the commencement of their monar chy, they had drawn canals from the Nile, which com municated with and fell into one another, (Diod. I. 1.) It appears also, that wheel-carriages were very ancient in Egypt ; for chariots were common there, in the age of Joseph, (Gen. c. xlv. v. 19.) This may serve to di minish our wonder, at those stupendous erections of cut stone, the pyramids, which were finished in Egypt before the xra of authentic history ; and of which the purpose has not been satisfactorily ascertained even to the pre sent day. They could only have been formed in a coun try naturally abundant with well formed blocks of the finest marble, and where a ready conveyance by water naturally presented itself.