Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 1).djvu/31

 otherwise fordable. It is also worthy of note that Pliny alludes to this custom, where he states that "Even now, in British waters, vessels of vine-twigs sewn round with leather are used." Mr. Layard likewise speaks of still finding on the Tigris light boats called terradas, constructed by the Southern Mesopotamians of twisted reeds, rendered watertight by bitumen, and often of sufficient consistency to support four or five men. As a remarkable proof of the long persistency of custom and of trade, we may add that the bitumen of Babylonia was exported to Egypt so early as the reign of Thothmes III., 1500, from the Is (now Hit) of Herodotus, where it is still abundant.

The balza of the western coast of South America, in use within the last hundred years, appears to have been a raft of logs of very light wood carefully fastened together, and capable of carrying occasionally as much as twenty tons.

Such were probably the rude beginnings of the art of ship-building.

Though it is impossible to give any authentic details of forms and means of navigation, such as those we have mentioned—remembrances as they are of pre-historic times—we need not doubt that the earliest people who practised navigation, in any sense after the manner since recognised, by ships or