they termed Triremes, or fhips of three banks of oars, fuppofed to be of their invention. Of these, in battle, they placed the long veffels in the centre, while the round veffels formed the wings of the fleet. In truth, the first ships were built round, or rather oval, because they were intended merely as tranfport-veffels and ships of burthen, and that form allowed ampler space for the ftowage of provisions and thofe curious mercantile commodities which were the objects of mutual barter between the inhabitants of Oriental countries. The tranf port-veffels were generally towed along the great rivers with cords, as is the cafe at prefent in moft countries where there flourishes any confiderable inland navigation; the fhips of burden were chiefly managed by fails, while thofe of war, for the convenience of more swiftly tacking about during an engagement, and approaching an enemy on the weakeft fide, were generally rowed with oars. Not that these latter were wholly deftitute of fails, but in that infancy of navigation, when men were lefs dexterous in the use of fails than oars, the former were often an incumbrance, and fometimes, in tempeftuous weather, or on a boisterous fea, were even the occafion of difafter and defeat. The Indians, whofe ob

ftinate

ftinate adherence to old cuftoms and maxims, however wrong and ridiculous, has been more than once animadverted upon, have not probably fo far deviated from the maxims of their ancestors in fhip-building, but that we may perceive in the present form of the junks that traffic along the coast of the Peninsula and the neighbouring ports of the Indian ocean, which are huge unfightly fabrics, almost as broad as they are long, a tolerable fpecimen of their ancient manner, and they are evidently built in the ftyle of fhips intended, by their capacious hold, to carry confiderable quantities of ftores.

In reality, the mercantile race of India had never any idea in the conftruction of them beyond their commercial ufe, nor ever intended them for longer voyages than at the moft to the Gulph of Ormus and the Red Sea. It was the Phoenicians, and their colony of Carthage, who, being obliged to defend from Grecian and Roman invaders their valuable trade and extenfive dominions, carried to the utmost point of attainable perfection, in those early times, the art of conftructing and navigating veffels, whether commercial or warlike. By them, the ancient fails, which, in many inftances, were made of nothing

nothing but hides, fewed together, were exchanged for more flexible ones of linen, and the leathern thongs, or cords, used for bracing them and various other purposes, for others of hemp and flax. By them, too, the old clumfy anchors, which fometimes confifted only of a large ftone, and fometimes of a log of wood, with a quantity of lead affixed, or a bufhel of fand, let down to stay the course of the ship, were displaced for anchors of iron, having at first one, and afterwards two, teeth, or flukes. It is a circumftance too much connected with our prefent fubject to be omitted, that, according to Scheffer, cited before, the Portuguese, at their landing on the coaft of Malabar, actually found the firft fpecies of rude ftone anchor in use among the inhabitants of Calicut, while their veffels themselves were flat-bottomed, had one maft, with one triangular fail, and were, in general, of the burden of two hundred tons. With respect to the merchant-fhips ufed at this day by the Indians for the purpose of carrying on their export-trade, they are mostly built of TEEK, a firm lafting species of timber growing plentifully on the mountainous regions of Malabar, and their cables and other cordage are made of the fibres of the nut of the cocoa

tree.

tree. Indeed, the whole veffel is frequently formed of planks cut out of that tree, and the reader may fee an account of the building of one of this fort, by Marco Polo, who visited India in the 12th century, inferted at length in the Anciens Rélations of M. Renaudot, who, from authentic fources of information, adds, that this useful tree not only "affords. materials wherewithal to build a flip, but to load her alfo when the is finifhed. The great planks of the trunk ferve for her hull and mafts; with the filaments or fibres of the nut, they spin the cordage and the fails; and they caulk her with the coarfer ftuff, and the oil extracted from the tree. They load her with nuts, both green and dry; and of the liquor they draw from them, which is very pleasant and sweet, if not kept too long, they make a kind of cream, comfits, butter, and an ex-cellent oil for wounds."* This tree is a native of the regions that lie within the confines of the torrid zone, both of the Eaftern and Western world, and the Indians of the Maldives very ingeniously employ the filaments of the fame nut in making fhirts, fhort vefts, and other articles of light apparel.

Ancient Accounts of India and China, in the notes, p. 20.

They ufe in their rivers, and in landing goods from foreign veffels, large flat-bottomed boats, whofe fides are five or fix feet high, the planks of which are very thin, and sewed together with their cordage; yielding like pasteboard, if they should happen, as is frequently the cafe, to strike against the shallows of the fhore; for which reafon the English employ them in preference to their own boats.

а

To return to the confideration of the progrefs of the Phoenicians in fhip building. Thofe, who invented the triremes, would, in course of time, naturally proceed to the formation of quinquiremes and galleys of a still greater number of banks of oars, but it was left to their ambitious and daring rivals of Greece and Rome to build fuch floating mountains as were the galleys, concerning which fomething will be faid hereafter, of thirty, forty, and even fifty, banks of oars; nor can we form any conception how it was poffible to navigate them to any purpose of utility. Thefe orders, or ranks of oars, were ranged, one above the other, not directly or perpendicularly, as fome have abfurdly imagined, but rofe by a gradual afcent, each at the back of the other, from the lowest to the higheft

VOL. VI.