construction of vessels of split or sawed planks fastened to ribs was unknown to the natives of the New World, but is portrayed on the most ancient paintings of the Egyptian artists. The Egyptians, however, were not sailors. Their commerce was carried on by the sturdy Phcenicians, the mariners of Tyre and Sidon, who founded colonies far west to the Pillars of Hercules and beyond. These taught the Greeks and Etruscans the art of shipbuilding, and converted the " barren bi ine," as the sea was called by the Homeric poets, into the fiontos, the pathway (as the word literally means), of nations.
We need not follow the development of marine architecture from the beginning of history till to-clay, when, singularly enough, one of the least buoyant of all substances, iron, is the chosen material for con structing the gigantic craft which ply to and fro on the ocean-ferries of the world. But it will be profitable to glance at the means of propulsion employed.
}limns of earliest was the pole, with which the raft was pushed or very slowly impelled by dipping it in the water, as is to this day the means employed by the unprogressive natives of Lake Titicaca. By expanding one or both ends of it, we have the single- or double-bladed .paddle, the former that most common in savage conditions, though the latter is used by the Eskimo and sonic others.
Oars and sails were late inventions. The oar, moving on a fulcrum, more noisy than the paddle (which in skilful hands is quite noiseless), and requiring the oarsman to look in the opposite direction from that in which he is going, is unsuited to the requirements of savage life, and is an outgrowth of a comparatively cultivated condition. It was nowhere seen in America, though it must have been known to the Aryan fam ily before its dispersion, for the word oar is common to all branches of it.
The word sail, on the other hand, is not a joint possession of Aryan tongues, and therefore it is believed that the invention of this means of propulsion was unknown to their common ancestors; yet in America it was familiar to several nations. When Pizarro was approaching the coast of Peru he encountered one of those balsas we have described, with a large sail set and bowling before the wind. Nor is this the only instance of the kind, as the historian Prescott thought it was. The sea-loving Caribs of the coast of South America impelled their canoes with sails of cotton cloth; and, in the Maya paintings on the walls of Chichen Itza in Yucatan, barks under sail are faithfully delineated.
The introduction of sails led to the construction of masts and spars, ropes and tackle, and the multifarious odds and ends of the shipwright so mysterious to the landsman.
With the introduction of the mariner's compass from the far East in the twelfth century transportation by water achieved an independence of the shore and the darkness, and the way was open for those wonderful discoveries which have led a modern writer to declare that the deeds of a single navigator have had more important consequences for human society than the creations of any artist, the victories of any conqueror, or the doc trines of any founder of a religion (Peschel). When the application of steam further liberated the navigator from dependence on wind or cur rent, the complete mastery of man over the watery element was nearly attained.
Land now to land transportation, man's first recourse was to his own back and limbs. Some nations, especially the Africans, carry their packs on their heads, even heavy, filled water jars being poised with extreme nicety. The Mongolians load their backs and shoulders. The natives of Mexico and Central America largely made use of a bag or net suspended by a band, the meca,6a/, across the forehead.
Beasts of Burden and Draught.—Except dogs in the extreme northern portion of America, the natives knew no beast of burden or draught ani ma]. This was for the simple reason that there was none suited for these purposes. The horse, the ass, the ox, the camel, the dromedary, and the dephant, all subjected to man's control and submissive to his dictates from beyond the beginnings of history in the Old World, were unknown in the fauna of America even by any near species. The part they acted in unfolding the drama of civilization on the great eastern continents was of the first importance. In war and peace, through the desert and the steppe, by caravans and trading-trains or by mounted squadrons and moving armies, they brought about that close and constant commingling of nations and languages on which, as we have before shown, the advance of civilization depends. If one reason more than another can be assigned why the American race was, as has been stated by some writers, three thousand years behind that of Asia, it is that it lacked the services of beasts of burden and draught. This is pictured in the languages of Europe, where chevalier, caballero, "horseman," is a title of honor and nobility, and boyard—literally the " oxherd "—is equivalent to that of prince.