H How many people have ever given a thought to the question of where rope comes from and how it is made, or realize what a variety of uses it is put to, and how dependent we are upon it in many of the everyday affairs of life? But let us suppose for a moment that the world were suddenly deprived of its supply of this very commonplace material, and of its smaller relatives, cords and twine. We should then begin to realize the importance of a seemingly unimportant thing, and to appreciate the difficulty in getting along without it.

Longfellow, in his poem “The Ropewalk,” which we have printed, shows that he recognized the scope of the usefulness of rope, and appreciated the romance and pathos connected with the use of a seemingly prosaic article; for in his brief catalogue of the uses of rope which passed in pictured procession through his mind, as he stood in the ropewalk and came under the influence of the drowsy hum and whir of the spinners’ wheels, he succeeded in covering a good share of the changing phases in the drama of human life: childhood in its swing, happy, without a care; the life of the sailor, which, with its heroism, its romance, its courageous meeting of danger or disaster, has always been the subject of verse and story; the pathetic picture of the faded beauty on the tight rope; and the tragic scene of the criminal dying upon the gallows.

“All these and many left untold,” the poet says, and when we once begin to let our thoughts run we find uses almost innumerable, on sea and land, to which our rope is put. Then, if we allow ourselves to come more and more under the drowsy spell of the wheels, we wonder how long all these things have been going on, and when, where and how the first rope was made and used.

A little investigation shows us that the use of rope is older than history itself. Back beyond the time of any authentic record of events, beyond even the range of tradition, the first rope-makers did their work.

In his very earliest days man must have had something to serve for cords or lines,—strips of hide or of bark, pliant reeds and rushes, withes of tough woods, fibrous roots, hair of animals,—then, as the need arose for longer, larger and stronger lines, it was met, as human ingenuity developed, by twisting a number of some of these elements together and forming a rope or cord. Just who was the prehistoric genius that first performed this operation, or in what part of the world he lived, we have no means of knowing.

Certain it is, according to the best authority, that not only were the ancient civilized nations accomplished rope-makers, but savage tribes in all parts of the world, for unknown thousands of years, have been able to make ropes and cords from a great variety of materials, and the beauty of their workmanship in many cases is little short of marvelous.

The North American Indians, for instance, are known to have made cordage not only from well-known fiber plants, as cotton, yucca and agave, but from such plants as the dogbane and nettle; from the inner bark of trees, slippery elm, willow, linden; from the fibrous roots of the spruce and pine; and from the hair, skins or sinews of various animals.

The native Peruvians were good rope-makers, using a substance known as “totora,” as well as many other materials. The Island tribes of the South Seas, expert in making rope, are favored with some very good materials for its manufacture, obtained from the leaves of various palms and plantains, from the fiber of the cocoanut, etc.

As, at the present day, the shipping and fishing industries are among the principal users of cordage, so it has been among all tribes and nations from earliest times. The people who lived on islands or the shores of large bodies of water, and who thus naturally became fishermen, have been the larger users of ropes and lines, and we find they always have been capable of producing a wide variety of fishing lines and nets of excellent construction, capable of capturing all sorts of fish, from the smallest brook trout to the huge sturgeon or halibut.

Even the whale has been successfully hunted by some adventurous tribes, and we show a picture of lines made by the Nootka Indians of Vancouver Island,A which are used by them in harpooning whales. The smaller rope is made from sinews of the whale, served or wound with small cord. It is very pliable and exceedingly strong. The harpoon is fastened to this line, which, in turn, is fastened to the larger rope and that to the boat. The large rope shown is made from spruce roots and is about two inches in diameter.

Ancient civilized peoples had their ropes and cordage, made from such materials as were available in their respective countries. The Egyptians are said to have made rope from leather thongs, and our illustration on page 14 will be found interesting in this connection. This is from a sculpture taken from a tomb in Thebes of the time of the Pharaoh of the Exodus.

While this scene is said by the best authority to represent the preparation of leather cords for use in lacing sandals, it has been supposed by some to be a representation of rope-making. In any event, the process is undoubtedly the same as that used in making rope.

The scene is depicted with the true Egyptian faculty for showing details, making words almost unnecessary to an understanding of their pictorial records. We see the raw material in the shape of the hide, and also two well-made coils of the finished product. One of the workmen is cutting a strand from a hide by revolving it and cutting as it turns. Anyone who has not tried it will be surprised to see what a good, even string can be cut from a piece of leather in this way.

Another man is arranging and paying out the thongs to a third, who is evidently walking backward in time-honored fashion, twisting as he goes. The thongs are evidently tied to a sort of swivel which is fastened to the man’s body in such a way that it enables him to keep a strain upon the strand without interfering with the twisting, in which process the weight shown upon the swivel is probably of some assistance.

The Egyptians also made rope from papyrus and from palm fiber. The specimen shown in our illustrationB is from the latter material, and was made probably not less than 3,500 years ago, having been taken from an ancient tomb. It has always been a puzzling question how the Egyptians were able to move and put in place the massive stones used in some of their structures, but it is certain that rope must have been an indispensable part of their equipment. Indeed, some of the sculptures illustrate the free use of rope in moving heavy stone carvings. It is known that rope was made in China at a very remote period.

It is of course certain that when men began to propel boats by means of sails, some sort of rope must have been at hand for rigging such vessels. The early history of the building of sailing ships seems to be lost in obscurity, but many of the ancients were good sailors, there seeming to be some difference of opinion as to who were the pioneers in undertaking long voyages. We show an illustration of an Attic sailing ship of the sixth century B.C. The drawing was made from the painting on a drinking cup in the collection of the British Museum. We also give a picture illustrating a detail of the bas-relief from the triumphal arch at Orange erected about A.D. 41. This shows an anchor and a coil of rope, evidently a halyard for a good-sized sail, rove through a pulley. In these and numerous other cases we have records of the use of rope among the Greeks and Romans, as well as similar ones from other nations, handed down to us through their sculptures and paintings.

The historians also occasionally mention the use of rope in connection with some great undertaking. Herodotus tells us that Xerxes, during his invasion of Greece, B.C. 480, crossed his army over the Hellespont upon two bridges of boats, which were held together, and the plank roadway supported, by enormous cables stretched from shore to shore, a distance of seven-eighths of a mile. It is said that these ropes, of which there were six to each bridge, were twenty-eight inches in circumference, two of each set being made of flax and four of papyrus. It is stated that the famous galley, the Syracusia, built for Hiero under the supervision of Archimedes, was furnished with hempen rope from Rhodes.