HISTORY OF MARINE ARCHITECTURE.

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acquired by their diligence in the pursuit of their profession, piracy, the habitsof naval war in a sufficient degree to render them extremely formidable tothose whom they thought proper to attack. The difficulty of passing throughthat narrow streight, now called the Sound, rendered still more formidable in.consequence of its being in general closed up during many months in the year,confined, for a considerable space of time, the enterprises of these maraudersto that immense salt lake, if the term be allowed, better known to modernsby the name of the Baltic.

Time, and the report of that success which those adventurers met with, whopushed their fortune in the open sea by means of the navigation of the Elbe,drew a considerable number of partisans to the same cause, and wonderfullystrengthened this piratical society. The various hordes and parties issuing fromdifferent countries, but confederating and fighting under one standard, becameinsensibly united in those bonds, which even in the most savage societies andassemblages of persons, are indispensably necessary to the well being of everycommunity. Although the cause of their union and friendship was merelyrapine and plunder, yet the general laws of nature, and what is called goodgovernment, were not only established for the better arrangement of theirinternal policy, but enforced with as much strictness as was practised amongthe most polished nations. A military confederation became gradually im-proved into a national body, by the gentle operation of marriage and consan-guinity, for the adjacent tribes, who solicited the alliance,, accepted the lawsand the name of the Saxons.

“ If the fact,” says a most ingenious author, “ were not established bythe most unquestionable evidence, it might appear an attempt to abuse theeredulitv of a modern reader, by the description of the vessels in which theSaxon pirates ventured to sport in the waves of the German ocean,, the Britishchannel, and the Bay of Biscay. The keel of their large flat bottomed boats,was framed of light timber, but the sides and upper works consisted only ofwicker, with a covering of strong hides. In the course of their slow and dis-tant navigation, they must always have been exposed to the danger, and veryfrequently to the misfortune of shipwreck; and the naval annals of the Saxonswere undoubtedly filled with the accounts of the losses they sustained on thecoasts of Britain and Gaul. But the daring spirit of the pirates braved theperils both of the sea and of the shore ; their skill, was confirmed by the habits

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