Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 1).djvu/27

 genius to construct the earliest raft. The exclusive honour of the discovery of navigation—which now, through the successive improvements of many ages, and the application of steam as a motive power, has arrived at its present high state of development, tending to the safety, convenience, and civilization of mankind—is too great an honour to be awarded to any single individual. Indeed it is a glory which writers alike in ancient and in modern times have declined to confer on any frail mortal like themselves. Accordingly the Libyans and the Greeks ascribed the merit of the invention to the gods. Neptune, however little in other respects may be known of this mythological personage, was not only worshipped by the ancients as the first inventor of navigation and supreme ruler of the sea, but his glory has survived the wreck of empires and the extinction of races, and the name of a heathen god is still associated with the dominion of the ocean.

There is, however, no difficulty in conceiving what would give the first idea of flotation. At the period of the earliest history of man acknowledged by Christian nations, our first parents must have noticed leaves or branches of trees floating in the river "which went out of Eden to water the garden." Thus would be conceived at the creation of man the idea of a vessel or of a substance which would float and could be made useful for his wants. The