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Behoind thim wagon-tires there sames to be a natural slope of earth." "Tip the tires over, Clary," I ordered; and presently a number of tires, from which the fire had burned the felloes, spokes, and hubs, fell into the coals, disclosing a recently filled aperture. "Looks as if the end of a passage had been filled, doesn't it?" asked the surgeon. "It certainly does," I answered.
A minute or so was required before the trouble could be remedied, for, just as the officers and orderlies were endeavoring to induce the populace to give way a thing the American always resists with a gay good humor that is peculiarly his own a nervous hack driver on the outskirts backed his bulky trap with unexpected force, and penned between it and the wheels of a newly-arrived and much more presentable equipage a fair equestrian who shrieked with fright and clung to her pommel as her excited "mount" lashed out with his heels and made splinters of the hack's rearmost spokes and felloes.
And the work of the wheels was like the work of a chariot wheel: their axletrees, and their naves, and their felloes, and their spokes, were all molten. And there were four undersetters to the four corners of one base: and the undersetters were of the very base itself.
The axle-tree is said to have been broad, since breadth afforded a security against being overturned, and the whole construction to have been strong and solid. The wheels had twelve spokes, which radiated from a nave of unusual size. The felloes were narrower than the Assyrian, but were still composed, like them, of two or three distinct layers of wood.
Notwithstanding the natural indolence of his character, he knew that he must know something before he could enter college, and that in case of a failure, he must again cultivate more acquaintance with the felloes of the shop, than with the fellows of the university; and with the stimulus of such a consideration before him, he applied himself to his books with extraordinary diligence.
The whole work was elevated, and stood upon four wheels, which were also cast, which had also naves and felloes, and were a foot and a half in diameter. Any one who saw the spokes of the wheels, how exactly they were turned, and united to the sides of the bases, and with what harmony they agreed to the felloes, would wonder at them.
Everything in use in that country was of the most simple and primitive construction. There were no sawmills or gristmills in that region; sawed lumber was not in the country. The wagons were two-wheeled carts made entirely of wood not a particle of iron about them; the hubs were of white elm, spokes of white oak or hickory, the felloes of black walnut, as it was soft and would bear rounding.
As at the present day in Kentucky, it was pressed into very large hogsheads. Upon these were pinned large wooden felloes, forming the circle of a wheel around the hogshead at either end, and in the centre of each head a large pin was inserted.
The felloes were made six inches thick, and were strongly doweled together with seasoned hardwood pins; the linch pin was of hickory or ash; the thills were wood; in fact all of it was wood.
This village of bowers also occupied more space than the encampments of native tribes in general; choice shady spots seemed to have been an object, and had been selected with care. We had at length been able to turn westward, keeping the river trees in view when, the rain continuing, we began to experience the effects of moisture on the felloes of the wheels.
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