Garden Carts at www.japanese-home-gardens.com

Before 1000 B.C. the people of north China were making use of two-wheeled carts and war chariots on land and crude sailboats on the rivers and along the coast. Carts pulled by man or beast were the dominant form of local transportation except for extensive use of wheelbarrows for carriage of both goods and passengers. Large carts using three or four animals—horses, mules, or camels—came to be well known throughout China.

Carts and wheelbarrows are convenient and often necessary. They are used for transporting materials to the garden carts including fertilizers, mulches and the like, and for removing crops and waste such as grass mowings and fallen leaves. Whichever type is favored it should be sturdy, run easily and be kept oiled. Low-slung, two-wheeled metal carts of the type illustrated here are especially convenient for amateurs because they are easier to load, unload and move than the conventional wheelbarrow of professional garden cartsers.

In other parts of the world, in Turkey or Afghanistan, for example, they live in tents. When they move, they pile tents, bedding, cooking pots, and cauldrons onto four-wheeled carts. In Greece and in Spain they often use donkeys for transportation. In India they travel in massively built two-wheeled carts pulled by bullocks. In central Asia they adapt themselves to the use of camels. In Mexico, Central America, and South America, they also live in tents, sometimes acquired from army surplus, and they move in open trucks. In the United States they live most often in rented stores and travel in limousines, preferably Cadillacs. Since World War II the Gypsies in western Europe have become equally motorized, but they still live in trailers.