vessel much
as a Venetian gondolier propels his gondola, i.e., with a single long
oar or paddle, which he pushed from him standing at the stern. They
would then in these boats attack the vessels of the enemy, which are
always represented as smaller than theirs, run them down or board them,
kill their crews or force them into the water, or perhaps allow them to
surrender. Meanwhile, the Assyrian cavalry was stationed round the marsh
among the tall reeds which thickly clothed its edge, ready to seize or
slay such of the fugitives as might escape from the foot.

When the refuge sought was an island, if it lay near the shore, the
Assyrians would sometimes employ the natives of the adjacent coast to
transport beams of wood and other materials by means of their boats, in
order to form a sort of bridge or mole reaching from the mainland to the
isle whereto their foes had fled. Such a design was entertained, or at
least professed, by Xerxes after the destruction of his fleet in the
battle of Salamis, and it was successfully executed by Alexander the
Great, who took in this way the new or island of Tyre. From a series of
reliefs discovered at Khorsabad wo may conclude that more than two
hundred years before the earlier of these two occasions, the Assyrians
had conceived the idea, and even succeeded in carrying out the plan, of
reducing islands near the coast by moles.

Under the Chaldaeans, whose "cry was in their ships," the Assyrians seem
very rarely to have adventured themselves upon the deep. If their
enemies fled to islands which could not be reached by moles, or to lands
across the sea, in almost every instance they escaped. Such escapes are
represented upon the sculptures, where we see the Assyrians taking a
maritime town at one end, while at the other the natives are embarking
their women and children, and putting to sea, without any pursuit being
made after them. In none of the bas-reliefs do we observe any sea-going
vessels with Assyrians on board and history tells us of but two or three
expeditions by sea in which they took part. One of these was an
expedition by Sennacharib against the coast of the Persian Gulf, to
which his Chaldaean enemies had fled. On this occasion he brought
shipwrights from Phoenicia to Assyria, and made them build him ships
there, which were then launched upon the Tigris, and conveyed down to
the sea. With a fleet thus constructed, and probably manned, by
Phoenicians, Sennacherib crossed to