y visiting those parts of the
earth where the natives are still savage, we may, as it were, leap
backward into ancient times, and behold with our own eyes the state of
marine architecture as it existed when our own forefathers were savages,
and paddled about the Thames and the Clyde on logs, and rafts, and
wicker-work canoes.

CHAPTER FOUR.

ANCIENT SHIPS AND NAVIGATORS.

Everything must have a beginning, and, however right and proper things
may appear to those who begin them, they generally wear a strange,
sometimes absurd, aspect to those who behold them after the lapse of
many centuries.

When we think of the trim-built ships and yachts that now cover the
ocean far and wide, we can scarce believe it possible that men really
began the practice of navigation, and first put to sea, in such
grotesque vessels as that represented on page 55.

In a former chapter reference has been made to the rise of commerce and
maritime enterprise, to the fleets and feats of the Phoenicians,
Egyptians, and Hebrews in the Mediterranean, where commerce and
navigation first began to grow vigorous. We shall now consider the
peculiar structure of the ships and boats in which their maritime
operations were carried on.

_Boats_, as we have said, must have succeeded rafts and canoes, and big
boats soon followed in the wake of little ones. Gradually, as men's
wants increased, the magnitude of their boats also increased, until they
came to deserve the title of little ships. These enormous boats, or
little ships, were propelled by means of oars of immense size; and, in
order to advance with anything like speed, the oars and rowers had to be
multiplied, until they became very numerous.

In our own day we seldom see a boat requiring more than eight or ten
oars. In ancient times boats and ships required sometimes as many as
four hundred oars to propel them.

The forms of the ancient ships were curious and exceedingly picturesque,
owing to the ornamentation with which their outlines were broken, and
the high elevation of their bows and sterns.

We have no very authentic details of the minutiae of the form or size of
ancient ships, but antiquarians have collected a vast amount of
desultory information, which, when put together, enables us to form a
pretty good idea of the manner of working them, while ancient coins and
sculptures have given us a notion of their general aspect. No doubt
many of these records are grotesque enough, nev