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 a 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 above. Yet such undoubtedly was the case.

In our third 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; and 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 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 elevations of the bows and stern. It may not be out of place, here, to present our readers with a picture of some of the curious-not to say grotesque-boats and ships used by the Chinese at the present day, and to remark that in their high antiquated sterns and elaborate ornamentation, they bear no small degree of resemblance to the ships of the ancients. The cut gives a view of the entrance to the Hoan-ho River, and the curious looking craft, some of which are like resuscitated antediluvians, may be seen still by any one who chooses to go there to see them!

We have no 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, nevertheless they must be correct in the main particulars.

Homer, who lived 1000 B.C. gives, in his "Odyssey," an account of ship-building in his time, to which antiquarians attach much importance, as showing the ideas then pre

CHINESE SHIPS AND BOATS-HOAN-110.

valent in reference to geography and the point at which the art of ship-building had then arrived. Of course due allowance must be made for Homer's tendency to indulge in hyperbole.

Ulysses, king of Ithaca, and deemed one of the wisest Greeks who went to Troy, having been wrecked upon an island, is furnished by the nymph Calypso with the means of building a ship, that hero being determined to seek again his native shore and return to his home and his faithful spouse Penelope,

"Forth issuing thus, she gave him first to wield
A weighty axe, with truest temper steeled,
And double-edged; the handle smooth and plain,
Wrought of the clouded olive's easy grain;
And next, a wedge to drive with sweepy sway;
Then to the neighbouring forest led the way.
On the lone island's utmost verge there stood
Of poplars, pines, and firs, a lofty wood,
Whose leafless summits to the skies aspire,
Scorched by the sun, or seared by heavenly fire
(Already dried). These pointing out to view,
The nymph just showed him, and with tears withdrew.
"Now toils the hero; trees on trees o'erthrown
Fall crackling round, and the forests groan;
Sudden, full twenty on the plain are strewed

And lopped and lightened of their branchy load,

At equal angles these disposed to join,

He smoothed and squared them by the rule and line.
(The wimbles for the work Calypso found),

With those he pierced them and with clinchers bound.

Long and capacious as a shipwright forms

Some bark's broad bottom to outride the storms,

So large he built the raft; then ribbed it strong
From space to space, and nailed the planks along.
These formed the sides; the deck he fashioned last;
Then o'er the vessel raised the taper mast,
With crossing sail-yards dancing in the wind:
And to the helm the guiding rudder joined
(With yielding osiers fenced to break the force
Of surging waves, and steer the steady course).
Thy loom, Calypso, for the future sails
Supplied the cloth, capacious of the gales.
With stays and cordage last he rigged the ship,
And, rolled on levers, launched her on the deep."

The ships of the ancient Greeks and Romans, of which

our engraving gives what may be considered a correct representation, were divided into various classes according to the number of "ranks," or "banks "—that is, rows of oars. Moveres contained one bank of oars; biremes, two banks; triremes three; quadriremes four; quinqueremes five; and so on. But the two latter were seldom used, being unwieldy, and the oars in the upper rank almost unmanageable from their great length and weight.

Ptolemy Philopater, of Egypt, is said to have built a gigantic ship with no less than forty tiers of oars, one above the other! She was managed by 4000 men, besides whom there were 2850 combatants; she had four rudders and a double prow. Her stern was decorated with splendid paintings of ferocious and fantastic animals; her oars protruded through masses of foliage, and her hold was filled with grain!

That this account is exaggerated and fanciful is abundantly evident; but it is highly probable that Ptolemy did construct a ship, if not several, of uncommon size.

The sails used in these ships were usually square, and when there was more than one mast, that nearest the stern was the largest. The rigging was of the simplest description, consisting sometimes of only two ropes from the mast to the bow and stern. There was usually a deck at the bow and stern, but never in the centre of the vessel. Steering was managed by means of a huge, broad oarsometimes a couple at the stern. A formidable "beak" was affixed to the fore-part of the ships of war with which the crew charged the enemy. The vessels were painted black, with red ornaments on the bows, to which latter Homer is supposed to refer when he writes of red-cheeked ships.