Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 1).djvu/87

 Herodotus has given a curious description of the boats seen by him when he was at Babylon—made of willows from Armenia, sewn round with hides, so that they must have as much resembled the Welsh coracles still in use, as they do some of the boats on the Assyrian monuments.

If, indeed, we may assume that there was little difference between Assyrian and Babylonian boats, the recently disentombed monuments of Nineveh will afford excellent evidence of their character, whether for purposes of war or pleasure, and confirm remarkably the accuracy of the "Father of History." Mr. Layard remarks, that vessels (or rather rafts) of an exactly similar construction were used by him for the conveyance of the sculptures he discovered, from Nimrúd to Bussorah. They were generally built of twigs and boughs, and covered with skins smeared with bitumen, to render them water-proof. Other boats represented on the sculptures would seem to have been constructed of planks of poplar, fastened together by wooden pins or trenails, and in some instances by iron nails. But, though using boats and rafts of a rude type for the conveyance of merchandise, there is no reason to suppose that either the Assyrians or the Babylonians had any naval tastes. Like the Egyptians and the Jews, when they wanted vessels of large dimension or strength, they had recourse to their Phœnician neighbours. Thus, Phœnician shipwrights built the vessels for Sennacherib's invasion of Chaldæa; as they were said to have done for Semiramis.