140 HISTORY OF MARINE ARCHITECTURE.

modern student at least with wonder, if not, in some measure, to impress himwith disbelief.

This circumstance may indeed be in some measure accounted for, by therecollection that ere the dreadful discovery of the use of gunpowder, or of thewonderful properties attached to the loadstone, were made, the necessary pro-perties of vessels, whether destined for the purposes of war, or of commerce,were considerably narrowed: but they suddenly and through necessity becameinstantaneously augmented when those events took, place, and the knowlege ofthem became common among maritime powers, as well as many other countrieswhich probably existed as states previous to the foundation of Rome. Amongthe Greeks, who were almost the aboriginal navigators, the science may bedivided into three epochs : the first discovery of it, the artificial method offorming a vessel out of many pieces of timber and plank, so curiously joined asto exclude the water, an improvement which soon superceded the primary prac-tice of using boats hollowed out of a single tree, or rafts composed of manyroughly lashed together; and in the third place, the introduction of beams aswell as decks, which rendered the vessel much better adapted to the purposesof war, and more commodious for the use of the merchant, than its predecessorpossibly could be. The former, however extensive its dimensions might be,could scarcely rank higher than as an open boat.

Among the Roman marine architects, no such division or progression ofimprovement took place. The first principles of the science had been handeddown to them from their ancestors ; and though as if intent on the pursuit ofmilitary glory only, for a considerable number of years after the founda-tion of the city, the people, and their government, seemed perfectly carelessand indifferent as to the possession of a marine; yet the moment their inor-dinate ambition suggested an idea of the necessity, their perfect fleets so quicklyoverspread the ocean, that their foes scarcely knew how to credit the reportof their equipment, till they experienced the fatal effects of its truth. TheCarthaginians, even in the first war entered into with these dangerous rivals,found them not merely attempting to dispute with them the sole possessionof their long assumed naval dominion, but threatening, even in the outset ofthe contest, its total and complete subversion.

Raised so expeditiously as to give it the appearance of being produced bysome preternatural cause, the Roman navy reached maturity almost on the in-stant of its birth : for there is little reason to suppose, that the gallies of

Augustus,