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HISTORY OF MARINE ARCHITECTURE.

principle of encreasing the draught of water, removed by any mechanical con-trivance, and placed in action at a distance from the vessel itself, the effectswould diminish in an equal ratio. Thus are these inventions, so opposite intheir principles, and so totally dissimilar in every point of action and me-chanism from each other, productive of the same specific advantage ; though anyendeavour towards causing them to approach each other closer, would becertainly destructive to both.

The inhabitants of the South Sea Islands, however the contentment of theirminds may have caused them to rest satisfied with the slender knowledge theypossess of the art of navigation; however the arrogant European may contemntheir contracted skill in the science of marine architecture, seem to be by no meansnovices in the practice of it, or the art of making such voyages as are congenialto their dispositions. Mr. Walter, from whom considerable assistance has beenderived in the description of the Indian proa, adds, almost immediately afterhaving given an account of that extraordinary vessel, that * Schouten,who traversed the south part of the Pacific Ocean, as far back as theyear 1615, met with a large double canoe, full of people, above a thousandleagues from the Ladrones, towards the S. E. “ If that double canoe,” adds he,“ was any distant imitation of the flying proa, which is no very improbable con-jecture, it must then be supposed that a range of islands, near enough to eachother to be capable of an accidental communication, is continued thither from theLadrones. This seems to be farther evinced by the circumstance, that all thofewho have crossed from America to the East Indies, in a southern latitude, havenever failed to difeover several small islands scattered over that immense ocean.”This observation has been considerably strengthened by the events of subsequentvoyages, particularly those of Byron, Cook, and other less successful naviga-tors ; whose attempts have consequently been made less known to the world.The same chain of opinions, propensities, and wants, appears to pervadethe inhabitants of all those islands, so profusely scattered, by the liberalhand of nature, over this immense ocean; so that a description of the vesselsof one, might, without any material impropriety, be considered as con-

* Anno Dom. 1615. William Cornelius Schouten, of Horn, and Jacob le Maire, of Amsterdam,undertook the sixth circumnavigation of the globe, by a new passage siutbwards, from the Streights of Ma-gellan in ”1 erra del Fuogo, which they happily discovered end passed, finding out Sebald’s Isles, StatenLand, Maurice Land, Barnevelt Isles, and so by Cape Horn. In the $"]th d g. of S. lat. they found out a newpassage into the South Sea , called ever since Le Maire’s Streight. In this voyage they gave names to severalislands and countries , returning to Holland by the East Indies; having been out two years and eighteendays.

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