HISTORY OF MARINE ARCHITECTURE,

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them for every purpose, which either their necessities, or their ambition,appeared to require. This method certainly carried with it more appearanceof regular system than the former, although it was more simple, and thescale of its action necessarily more confined. The invention is supposed byPliny, and others, to have originated with the inhabitants of that part ofEurope now called Germany, who being little known, of large stature, andrough aspect, were considered even by the Romans themselves as barbariansand savages. These boats, or vessels, varying in no degree from the moderncanoes, found, almost without exception, throughout all the newly discoveredislands, were in many instances so capacious as to contain thirty persons, andwere on that account either extremely formidable, or useful, according tothe tempers of the navigators, inasmuch as, if so light a term be admissible,they ranked as first rates in that quarter of the world.

The term navis trabaria * ** , which very frequently occurs among Latinauthors, undoubtedly refers to a vessel of this kind, though, were it not for'the context, it might naturally have been concluded, that the appellation wascontrived merely for the purpose of giving a concise description of a vesselbuilt somewhat according to the modem practice and construction. The dis-covery of ship-building, or rather the invention of it, as it may be consideredmost deserving of the last term, is attributed by the ancients to a casualobservation on the facility with which a split reed (in latin, canna) floated onthe surface of the water, and from that term is very readily derived the Indianword canoe -j*.

The

* Meaning literally a beamed ship, which would, according to modem interpretation, be applied indistinction between a boat and a decked vessel. By the ancients, however, it appears to have beenmost frequently used to express a boat, or canoe, formed out of an hollowed beam, or balk.

+ The exact similitude between the description given of these vessels by the most eminent authorsof antiquitv, and those which are at this moment found in every newly discovered island, or country,washed by the south seas, well warrants such a digression as is necessary to point out the comparison.

** Germania, praedones singulis arboribus cavatis navigant, quarum quaedam et triginta homines ve-hunt.” Pliny, lib. xvi. cap. 31. The German robbers navigate., or, to use a more proper term,pass over the water in hollowed trees, of which some are so large, as to be capable of containing thirtypersons.” “ Novasque alias primum Galli inchoantes cavabant ex singulis arboribus.” Livy, lib. xxi.cap. 26. The Gauls (in aid of the vessels already collected) began to form others out of single trees,which they cut down, and hollowed.” “ Unus e Barbaris, setate senior, corpore excellens, dignitatequantum ostendebat cultus, eminens, cavatum ut illis mos est ex materia conscendit alveum, solusque

Pii . id