A RETROSPECTIVE VIEW TAKEN OF THE GRADUAL PROGRESS OF THE INDIAN AND OTHER ORIENTAL NATIONS IN SHIP-BUILDING, WITH STRICTURES ON THE FORM AND EQUIPMENT OF THE I HAVE already observed, that the great rivers of India, as well as the vaft number of them, interfecting the country as they do in every poffible direction, and many of them at certain feasons of the year, like the Nile, overflowing their banks, and fertilizing the foil, muft very early have had the effect to make the Indians acquainted with the art of navigation, especially as it was on the banks of those rivers, as well on account of superstitious motives as for the convenience of inland commerce, that the first Indian cities were erected. Their first efforts in this way were, doubtless, confined to voyages up and down the Ganges and Indus, and their veffels, probably, confifted of that kind of boats, made of great canes or reeds, or, as we call them, bamboos, which grow plentifully on the banks of the large rivers, and in the fens and marshes X 2 7 of of India, and with which, closely compacted together, and probably covered, like thofe of the old Britons, with raw hides, according to Diodorus Siculus, the Indian monarch, whom the Greeks have recorded under the name of Staurobates, formed a fleet, to the number of four thousand, to oppose the fleet of Semiramis on the Indus.* In this engagement, however, the former was unfuccefsful, and the reafon feems to have been, (for I am inclined, under certain limitations, to admit the fact of fuch a battle having taken place, though reported by the fabulous Ctefias,) that the Affyrian fovereign had engaged her Phoenician fubjects, who were more expert mariners than the Indians, to build that fleet, and direct its operations against the unpractised enemy. Of the fhips that compofed this fleet, after all, no very magnificent idea can be formed, fince it was built in detached, pieces on the coafts of Cyprus, Syria, and Phoenicia, and tranfported thence, on the backs of camels, to `the Indus; and with refpect to the reed-conftructed boats, covered with leather, so often mentioned above, as belonging both to the * See Diod. Sic. lib. ii. p. 95, and Suidas ad Vocem Semi ramis. old old Britons and Indians, with whatever contempt we may look upon them, they were certainly the only ones made use of by all nations, except the adventurous maritime racę of Phœnicia, during the early periods of the world. We have no account of any others being anciently used in the rivers of Ethiopia, Egypt, and the Sabæan Arabia; and it is on this account Virgil affigns to Charon, the infernal ferryman, a boat made of materials of the fame kind:. -Gemuit fub pondere cymba SUTILIS. Eneid VI. 414 In truth, these boats themfelves were a great improvement on the fimple floats, compofed of rafts bound together with thongs made of the finews of animals, that formed the first tranfports. They were built hollow to refem ble the canoes, which, confifting of the trunks of trees, excavated by fire, ferved to convey the primitive race of men, as the larger floats did their articles of barter. Hides, doubtlefs, hardened and prepared with great care, ferved as a fheathing to thefe veffels, and over all was probably spread a coat of rofin, or pitch, x 3 more 1 more firmly to secure them against the penetration of the water. The Greeks, at least, we know were accustomed to fortify the outside of their veffels with pitch, mixed with rofin, which gave them a dark appearance, and hence, in Homer, they are uniformly denominated μɛλawai, or black. The Romans in fucceeding ages improved on this practice, and set the first example to pofterity of fheathing veffels with metal, though this fact is not generally known; but I fhall prefent it to the reader on the authority of Mr. Lock, who, in his Hiftory of Navigation, prefixed to Harris's Voyages, informs us as follows: "Leo Baptifti Alberti, in his Book of Architecture, lib. v. cap. 12, has these words: But Trajan's fhip having been weighed out of the lake of Riccio, at the very time while I was compiling this work, where it had laid funk and neglected for above thirteen hundred years; I obferved that the pine and cypress of it had lafted most remarkably. On the outside, it was built with double planks, daubed over with Greek pitch, caulked with linen rags, and over all a fheet of lead faftened on with little copper nails. Raphael Vollaterranus, in his Geography, fays, this fhip was weighed up by the order of Cardinal Profpero Co lonna. lonna. Here we have caulking and sheathing together above fixteen hundred years ago; for I fuppofe no man can doubt that the fheet of lead nailed over the outside with copper nails was fheathing, and that in great perfection, the copper nails being used rather than iron, which, when once rufted in the water with the working of the fhip, soon lose their hold, and drop out." A race conftantly refiding on the banks of rivers, who were poffeffed of such vast extent of fea-coaft, and who, probably, in part, supported themselves by fishing, could not fail of obferving both in what manner and with what agility the tenants of the watery element urged their way through that element. The remark of Pliny, therefore, that their fins fuggefted to them the first notion of oars, and the tails of birds, with which they viewed them direct their flight through the pathless air, the use of the helm,* is founded in reafon and probability. The attempt to collect the aid of the winds, by expanding a fail, to accelerate their progress on rivers, and in creeks, must, at first, have proved a hazardous, and, in many instances, a fatal, experiment. But, in this |