Page:Horse shoes and horse shoeing.djvu/639

, and their feet shod, carriages are largely employed, and the streets of the towns are wide—Peking, for example. In the south, however, where horses are extremely scarce and water-carriage convenient, as at Canton, the streets are very narrow and unfit for the passage of wheeled vehicles, and all the land transport has to be performed by men.

With the introduction of shoeing, a gradual revolution in the social economy of nations, especially those of a commercial tendency, commenced, and benefits began to be derived equivalent to the employment of a powerful moving machine, capable of being utilized as never machine was before. The many important uses for which the horse was adapted duly developed themselves; long distances could be quickly travelled, day after day, without injury to those hitherto vulnerable organs, the feet; and roads, slowly and expensively made, often wrung out of the enforced labour of slaves, were not now required to save the hoofs of horses. Heavy loads could be transported almost continuously by the same team at an accelerated pace, without demanding the tedious intervention of the levers and rollers of not long before; the horse's powers were also increased by this simple means to a degree that nothing else ever devised could have done; while its strength was husbanded, and the painfulness of its oftentimes onerous duties was perhaps rendered less acute.

Land-traffic, where shoeing is not resorted to, and where few other animals besides the horse or mule are employed, is generally at a low ebb, because everything must be carried on their backs; and as, without some