HISTORY OF MARINE ARCHITECTURE.

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fallen from that period when the contending fleets of Carthage and her rivalsister met in dreadful conflict to contend for what was considered the navalempire of the universe.

It would nevertheless be unfair to insist, that the neglect of maritime pur-, suits caused the ruin of the empire, or that the utmost attention to them couldhave averted it; but this circumstance arose, as has been already remarked,merely from the peculiar situation in which the empire was placed withrespect to the different nations who invaded it. Even the Goths themselves,who in later times became the most formidable enemies to the power of Rome,which they three times pillaged, and reduced to the utmost extremity of dis-tress, were totally destitute even of boats sufficient to transport them over theDanube, when flying in dismay to escape from the swords of the furious Huns.Such little apprehension did the emperor Valens and his generals enterts’n cftheir naval strength, that even the maintenance of a flotilla sufficient to preventthe passage of that river was considered unnecessary ; and when the fugitivenation was, after much negociation, permitted to cross it, the Romans them-selves laboured under no small degree of difficulty in providing a quantity ofdouble canoes, or small boats, sufficient for their transport. When the samepeople soon afterwards, under the direction of their own leaders, carried a similarmeasure into etfect, the passage was made on rafts, and other contrivances,nearly as rude as those which had existed w'hen the art of navigation was inits very infancy. Even after they had risen into a very considerable degreeof political rank, had defeated and slain the emperor Valens in the battle ofHadrianople, had laid siege to that capital, and felt themselves, aided by therecruits which their cause had received from Germany, possessed of suchconsequence and power, as enabled them to meditate the grandest enter-prizes, the vessels they possessed were of no higher description than those nowcalled canoes *.

' No

—Out of a fleet, consisting of eleven hundred sail, Ucenty-tteo only xrere preserved, for the purposeof being conveyed on carriages, so that they might attend the march of the army, and serve, asoccasion required, to form temporary bridges for the passage of such rivers as intersected its route.

* Mr. Gibbon adopts this precise term.—“ They” (the Ostrogoths) says he, “ were persuaded,that, by a bold attempt, they might surprise, in the silence and darkness of the night, the sleeping armvof the Romans ; and the whole multitude was hastily embarked in a fleet of three thousand canoes.”Gibbon, eh. xxvi. He assigns, in a subjoined note, the following very satisfactory reasons for theYol. Y adoption