eat maritime peoples of the world, from the Phoenicians to
the English, each figuring in the history of the world of its day, and
helping weave into a web of universal history the stories of its various
parts.

[Sidenote: Origin of navigation.]

Man's normal contact with the sea is registered in his nautical
achievements. The invention of the first primitive means of navigation,
suggested by a floating log or bloated body of a dead animal, must have
been an early achievement, of a great many peoples who lived near the
water, or who in the course of their wanderings found their progress
obstructed by rivers; it belongs to a large class of similar discoveries
which answer urgent and constantly recurring needs. It was, in all
probability, often made and as often lost again, until a growing habit
of venturing beyond shore or river bank in search of better fishing, or
of using the easy open waterways through the thick tangle of a primeval
forest to reach fresh hunting grounds, established it as a permanent
acquisition.

[Sidenote: Primitive forms.]

The first devices were simply floats or rafts, made of light wood,
reeds, or the hollow stems of plants woven together and often buoyed up
by the inflated skins of animals. Floats of this character still survive
among various peoples, especially in poorly timbered lands. The skin
rafts which for ages have been the chief means of downstream traffic on
the rivers of Mesopotamia, consist of a square frame-work of interwoven
reeds and branches, supported by the inflated skins of sheep and
goats;[528] they are guided by oars and poles down or across the current.
These were the primitive means by which Layard transported his winged
bull from the ruins of Nineveh down to the Persian Gulf, and they were
the same which he found on the bas-reliefs of the ancient capital,
showing the methods of navigation three thousand years ago.[529] Similar
skin rafts serve as ferry boats on the Sutlej, Shajok and other head
streams of the Indus.[530] They reappear in Africa as the only form of
ferry used by the Moors on the River Morbeya in Morocco; on the Nile,
where the inflated skins are supplanted by earthen pots;[531] and on the
Yo River of semi-arid Sudan, where the platform is made of reeds and is
buoyed up by calabashes fastened beneath.[532]

[Sidenote: Primitive craft in arid lands.]

In treeless lands, reeds growing on the margins of streams and lakes are
utilized for the construction