Page:The Present State of Peru.djvu/237

Rh human capacity, are too apt to withhold their admiration from an enterprize, which, to be brought to perfection, required much meditation, many trials, and a considerable portion of time. If, however, we recur to past ages, and bestow an attentive consideration on the annals they have transmitted to us, in proportion as we perceive the slowness of their progressive advances, we become sensible of all the excellence it has to boast.

The earliest men, content with the waters with which they were supplied by the rivers and springs, applied their industry solely to the intention of conducting them by certain channels formed without order or method. The necessity of raising them to irrigate arid and lofty grounds, or of clearing them away from inundated spots, induced them to have recourse to certain means, which, however imperfect, were not without their effect. By the aid of machines moved by a great number of men stationed at different points, the waters of the Euphrates were elevated to the gardens of the opulent Babylon. The Egyptians, embarrassed by the frequent inundations of the Nile, thought of various means by which they might drain their grounds; but were ignorant of the contrivance which was requisite for that purpose. They fancied it to be a cylinder, round which a tube should revolve, both withoutside and within, in the form of a screw, and, by agitating the water, should raise it so long as the cylinder should be kept in motion. This was in reality the screw of Archimedes.

In his History of the Progress of the Human Understanding, Savarien asserts, that Ancus Martius, the fourth king of Rome, conducted to that city the water of the fountain Picenia, by the