the inside with papyrus. They make one rudder, which passes through the keel; and they have a mast formed of the thorn tree, and sails of the paper reed."

Of our modern travellers in Africa, Bruce observes: "Pliny says that the whole plant together was used for making boats, a piece of the acacia tree being put in the bottom to serve as a keel; to which plants were joined, being first sewed together, then gathered up at stem and stern, and the ends of the plant tied fast there; and this is the only boat they still have in Abyssinia." (Travels, vol. v. p. 6.)

Also, Belzoni describes a curious boat which he hired on the Lake Moris, and compares "to old Baris, or boat of Charon (the boat in which the Egyptians carried their dead to the grave). The outer shell, or hulk, was composed of rough pieces of wood, scarcely joined, and fastened by four other pieces, wrapped together by four more across, which formed the deck; no tar, no pitch, either inside or out; and the only preventive against the water coming in was a kind of weed, moistened, which had settled in the joints of the wood." (p. 380.)

This vessel bears a great resemblance to the baris of Herodotus, and its seams were in like manner stuffed with a sort of weed, or reed, which we consider to be the paper reed, the head or panicle of it being extremely well adapted for filling up holes and crevices, as Pliny testifies in the following words: "The filaments or hair of the panicle, beaten and put between the joints of ships, cements the weaving, being more tenacious than glue, and firmer than pitch, in closing up leaks." +

the

Strabo concisely, but very accurately, characterises the plant thus, "The papyrus is a slender rod, bearing a head of hair (panicle) on its top "+; and Pliny likens this head to a thyrsus (thyrsi modo cacumen).

The ship Baris appears in all the hieroglyphics of Egypt; and, as the learned Kircher states, "this most celebrated ship of the Egyptians, Baris, is a sailing vessel made of papyrus,

* Ἐκ τῆς ἀκάνθης κοψάμενοι ξύλα ὅσον τε διπήχεα, πλινθηδὸν συντιθεῖσι, ναυπηγεύμενοι τρόπον τοιόνδε· περὶ γόμφους πυκνοὺς καὶ μακροὺς περιείρουσι τὰ διπήχεα ξύλα· ἐπέαν δὲ τρόπῳ τούτῳ ναυπηγήσωνται, ξυγὰ ἐπιπολῆς τείχουσι αὐτῶν. νομεῦσι δὲ οὐδὲν χρέωνται· ἔσωθεν δὲ τὰς ἁρμονίας ἐν ὧν ἐπάκτωσαν τῇ βύβλῳ. πηδάλιον δὲ ἓν ποιεῦνται, καὶ τοῦτο διὰ τῆς τρόπιος διαβύνεται· ἱστῷ δὲ ἀκανθίνῳ χρέωνται, ἱστίοισι δὲ βυβλίνοισι. (Euterpe, cap. 96.)

+ Paniculæ coma....contusa et interjecta navium commissuris ferruminat textus, glutino tenacior, rimisque explendis fidelior pice. (Lib. xvi. cap. 36.)

† Ἡ μὲν βίβλος ψιλὴ ῥάβδος ἔστιν ἐπ ̓ ἄκρῳ ἔχουσα χαίτην. Geogr. l. xvii.)

:

according to Plutarch; which kind, on the testimony of Herodotus, was used in their sacred rites." * It is frequently represented carrying the sacred ox, or Osiris, on board +; and there was an annual festival among the Egyptians, in honour of the ship of Isis.

Likewise, Diodorus Siculus has recorded that "river boats were built of reed ; but we would conclude that this reed (xáλapos) signifies more correctly the reed papyrus, because the Arúndo Donax §, generally intended by xáλaμos, is not so suitable a plant to construct vessels with, since it is too liable to split, and is of too brittle a nature.

Strabo, mentioning the marshes and the beds of reeds near the Euphrates, observes: "From their reeds all sorts of vessels are formed; those which are fit to receive water are daubed over with pitch (bitumen), but others are used without any; they also make sails of reeds, after the manner of mats or hurdles." ||

Now, the ark of the child Moses was a small vessel of this kind, “an ark of bulrushes, and daubed with slime and with pitch." (Exod., chap. ii. v. 3.) Clemens. Alexand. (Strom., i. 343.) properly interprets this ark to have been "a vessel of the indigenous paper reed” (ἐκ βίβλου τοῦ ἐπιχωρίου σκεῦος).

Again, Strabo (Geogr., lib. 16.) says that "rafts made of reeds" (oxedias naλauivas) were used on the Lake Sirbonis; and Isaac Casaubon remarks that Diodorus calls these 6 bundles of reeds” (δέσμας καλάμων).

We learn from Denon that mere bundles of reeds are at this day in use amongst the people of Upper Egypt, see fig. 89. which is explained in the following words: "The manner of passing the Nile, sitting upon a double bundle of straw, with a short and double paddle, the legs serving for oars. The inhabitants of Upper Egypt make their voyages in this way, going up and down the Nile; they keep it in the water

* Navis hæc celeberrima Ægyptiorum Baris, est navigii papyracei, teste Plutarcho, genus quo in sacris, Herodoto teste, utuntur. (Edip. Ægypt., vol. iii. cap. 5. p. 138.)

+ There is a remarkable coincidence between this religious custom of the Egyptians and that of the Mexican Americans. The great god and leader of the Mexicans, called Mexitli, or Vitzliputzli, was carried about in a sacred ark made of reeds. Compare Faber's Origin of Pagan Idol., vol. ii. p. 311., and vol. iii. p. 120. 305.

† Ἐκ τοῦ καλάμου κατεσκεύασε πλοῖα ποτάμια. (Bib. Hist., lib. ii. cap. 17.) According to Dr. Sibthorp, the Arúndo Dònax is still called, in modern Greece, only kálλapo; and Theophrastus says it was the most common of the καλάμοι.

|| Εξ ὧν καλάμινα πλέκεται παντοῖα σκεύη, τὰ μὲν ὑγροῦ δεκτικὰ, τῇ ἀσφαλτῳ περιαλειφόντων, τοῖς δ ̓ ἄλλοις ψιλῶς χρωμένων· καὶ ἱστία δὲ ποιοῦνται καλάμινα, ψιάθοις, ἢ ῥιψὶ παραπλήσια. (Geogr., lib. xvi.)

two or three hours, even till the sheaf be perfectly soaked through." *

This faisceau de paille, doubtless, signifies a bundle of straw, or stalks, of the common Egyptian reed.

Moreover, a later traveller (Belzoni, p. 301.), describing the inundation of the Nile, says, 66 some crossed the water with reeds tied up in bundles;" and the poet Lucan notices the same circumstance: "when the Nile overflows, the Memphian boat is constructed of the thirsty (or soaking) paper reed."

"Cum tenet omnia Nilus, Conseritur bibulâ Memphitis cymba papyro."

Or, as Rowe has well rendered it,

"When fruitful Egypt lies afloat,

The Memphian artist builds his reedy boat."

Lib. iv. 136.

Bruce "imagines, also, that the junks (from juncus, a bulrush) of the Red Sea, said to be of leather, were first built with papyrus, and covered with skins." (vol. v. p. 6.) Compare Herodotus, Clio, chap. 194., where barks, made of a framework of osiers, and covered with skins, are said to have gone

* Manière de passer le Nil assis sur un double faisceau de paille, avec une courte et double rame, les jambes servant d'avirons. Les habitans de la Haute Egypte traversent ainsi montant et descendant le Nil, ils tiennent à l'eau deux et trois heures jusqu'à ce que la fascine soit absolument imbibée. (Voyage dans Egypte.)

from Armenia to Babylon. Likewise, Belzoni (p. 62.) mentions crossing to the Island of Elephantine "in the ferry-boat, which is made of branches of palm trees, fastened together with small cords, and covered on the outside with a mat, pitched all over."

This very simple method of forming a foat, δέσμη καλάμων, is evidently most ancient and primeval, and, at the same time perfectly well adapted for passing and repassing rivers, as well as for taking short voyages.

But, after a time, the Egyptian began to improve his art of ship-building, by tying together the ends of the bundles of papyrus, in order to give his vessels somewhat the shape of a canoe (fig. 90.); he then daubed them over with pitch, or

covered the reeds with skins or mats (fig. 91.); his ropes

he twisted from the bark of the same plant, and of which he made his sails like matting. (fig. 92.) These skiffs being so light and portable were very swift in the water, either when impelled by a paddle, or by oars, or with a fair wind.

keel of thorn tree (Mimosa nilótica), and their sides of the paper reed; afterwards, the framework altogether consisted of that wood, having their joints and crevices calked with that plant. Finally, indeed, his favourite reed was suc

ceeded by the more solid and durable materials, timber, iron, canvass, hempen ropes, and such like modern equipments.

The curious mosaic pavement discovered in the celebrated temple of Fortune at Præneste, now in the Barberini palace at Rome, represents numerous objects relative to the manners, customs, and natural history of Egypt and of Ethiopia. It is engraved and described in the 14th volume of Montfaucon's Antiquities. Of the above engravings, figs. 88. 90, 91, 92. exhibit some of the different forms of the ancient Egyptian vessels, taken from that pavement. Figs. 90, 91, 92. are three canoes or skiffs made of papyrus; fig. 91., in particular, bears a near resemblance to the bundles of reeds at fig. 89., and is tied together with bands in a similar way. These boats are of the kind called by the Greeks vaus aμpinpuμvòs, by the Romans, navis biprora, two prowed, having both ends alike; and are of the shape of a crescent, or half-moon, μyvosions. Fig. 88. most probably is meant for the ship Baris, as described by Herodotus. Vessels of the same form and nature with these may be seen in the hieroglyphics, sculptures, gems, intaglios, and drawings of the ancient Egyptians; and, according to Bruce, "this is the only boat they still have in Abyssinia, which they call Tancoa, and from the use of them it is that Isaiah describes the nations, probably the Egyptians, upon whom the vengeance of God was speedily to fall." (Travels, vol. v. p. 6.)

The passage alluded to here is this (Isaiah, ch. xviii.v. 1, 2.): "Woe to the land shadowing with wings, which is beyond the rivers of Ethiopia: that sendeth ambassadors by the sea, even in vessels of bulrushes, upon the waters, saying, Go, ye swift messengers, to a nation scattered, and peeled; to a people terrible from their beginning hitherto; a nation meted out and trodden down, whose land the rivers have spoiled."

"The vessels of bulrushes," in vasis Goma, here mentioned, Symmachus, with Aquila and Theodotion, have well translated — ἔν σκεύεσι βιβλία, διὰ σκεύων παπυρίνων, ἐν σκεύεσι παρ πύρου. wúpov. (See Celsii Hierobot., vol. ii. p. 146.)

Likewise, Bishop Lowth remarks," it is well known that the Egyptians commonly used, on the Nile, a light sort of ships, or boats, made of the reed papyrus."

"Go, ye swift messengers; for the papyrine boats were admirably light. Achilles Tatius relates that they were not larger than what a person could carry each of them. If they had been of any other kind, they would stick fast by remaining in the mud wherefore it was sufficient for them to have small and light vessels, and a little quantity of water, so that, if it ever happened there was no water, they convey the skiff on