e guidance and preservation of their
vessel. Thus our Saviour--of whom the ark was a type--specially guides
and protects those who flee to him for refuge.

But although we have noticed the ark as being the first ship, we cannot
with propriety place it in the front of the history of navigation.
After the flood the ark seems to have been soon forgotten, or at least
imperfectly remembered, and men reverted to their little canoes and
clumsy boats, which sufficed for all their limited wants. It was not
until about a thousand years later in the world's history that men built
ships of considerable size, and ventured on prolonged _coasting_-
voyages, for the purposes of discovery and commerce. Navigation had
been practised, and the art of ship-building had made very considerable
progress, long before men dared to lose sight of the shore and venture
out upon the mysterious bosom of the great unknown sea.

To the ancients the Mediterranean was the ocean; and among its bays, and
creeks, and islands, maritime enterprise sprang into being and rose into
celebrity. Among the Phoenicians, the Egyptians, and Hebrews, we find
the earliest traces of navigation and commerce. The first of these
nations, occupying the narrow slip of land between Mount Lebanon and the
Mediterranean, rose into fame as mariners between the years 1700 and
1100 before Christ--the renowned city of Sidon being their great
sea-port, whence their ships put forth to trade with Cyprus and Rhodes,
Greece, Sardinia, Sicily, Gaul, and Spain. Little is known of the state
of trade in those days, or of the form or size of ancient vessels.
Homer tells us, in his account of the Trojan War, that the Phoenicians
supplied the combatants with many articles of luxury; and from Scripture
we learn that the same enterprising navigators brought gold to Solomon
from Ophir in the year 1000 B.C.

A short time previous to this the Phoenicians ventured to pass through
the Strait of Gibraltar, and for the first time beheld the great
Atlantic Ocean. Proceeding along the coast of Spain, they founded
Cadiz; and, not long after, creeping down the western coast of Africa,
established colonies there. But their grandest feat was achieved about
600 years B.C., when they sailed down the Red Sea and the eastern coast
of Africa, doubled the Cape of Good Hope, sailed up the western coast,
and returned home by the Strait of Gibraltar. Bartholomew Diaz must
hide his diminished head before this