16 THE OCEAN. 



tries many thousand miles apart would be attended 

 with difficulties so great as to be practically insur- 

 mountable. Add to this the natural barriers pre- 

 sented by lofty mountain ranges and impassable 

 rivers, as well as the dangers arising from ferocious 

 animals and from hostile nations, and we shall see 

 that with the existing power and skill of man, com- 

 merce in such a condition would be almost unknown, 

 and man would be little removed from a state of bar- 

 barism. The Ocean, however, spreading itself over 

 three-fourths of the globe, and penetrating with in- 

 numerable sinuosities into the land, so as to bring, 

 with the aid of the great rivers, the facilities of navi- 

 gation comparatively near to every country, affords 

 a means of transport unrivalled for safety, speed, and 

 convenience. In very early ages men availed them- 

 selves of naval communication. We find repeated 

 mention made of ships by Moses ;* and in the 

 dying address of the patriarch Jacob to his sons, he 

 speaks of "a haven for ships ;"f while Job, who 

 was probably contemporary with Abraham, alludes 

 to them as an emblem of swiftness,:}: which would 

 seem to imply that navigation had then attained 

 considerable perfection, nearly four thousand years 

 ago. In profane history the earliest mention of 

 navigation is that of the voyage of the ship Argo 

 into the Euxine, which took place probably about 

 three thousand years ago. What a contrast be- 

 tween her timorous and creeping course, and the 

 arrowy speed and precision of a modern Atlantic 



* Numb. xxiv. 24 j and Deut. xxviii. 68. f Geu. xlix. 13. 



X Jub ix. 26. 



