30 FOLLOW THE WHALE 



India, and those sloe-eyed ones, who alone know how to cut the 

 teeth from the sea beasts, are Egyptians. The sea beasts are whales 

 of a species which was until recently considered exceedingly rare 

 but which is now known to occur throughout the world. Their 

 teeth have been discovered buried with potsherds and other artifacts 

 in early settlements in southern Persia. These teeth were, for some 

 reason, considered particularly valuable by the people of those coun- 

 tries in bygone ages. 



This small whale, the False Killer (Pseudorca crassidens), was, 

 until 1 86 1 , known to us only through fossil skulls dug up in England. 

 Then it suddenly appeared on the coast of Germany, and subse- 

 quently has been found to occur all over the world, except in polar 

 seas; whole schools have been stranded on rocky coasts in South 

 Africa and Scotland in recent years. It grows to a length of about 

 fourteen feet, never more than eighteen feet, is uniformly black in 

 color, and is round and tublike in form. It has a rather small, re- 

 curved dorsal fin; the head is flattened above, rounded, and blunt in 

 front, and is without a trace of a beak. The mouth contains eight to 

 ten strong, blunt, peglike teeth on either side of both jaws. The 

 eyes are small and the animal is altogether quite a gruesome-looking 

 beast. It is thought that the sudden appearance of these whales off 

 western Europe may have been due to a slow shift of the warm wa- 

 ters of the Gulf Stream towards those coasts, bringing with it the 

 fish upon which this species feeds. 



The Phoenician ships were, as far as we know and with the pos- 

 sible exception of those of southern India, the finest sea boats and 

 the sturdiest built of any afloat at that time. Their prototypes about 

 the Persian Gulf in very ancient days were little more than glorified 

 rowboats, tublike, open, and undecked, with ungainly stem and 

 towering stern, and without keels. They were propelled by oars 

 lashed to the gunwales, and were originally only wooden exaggera- 

 tions of the primitive skin boats used on the Euphrates River, grown 

 in size but little else. These early types were made of cedar planks 

 caulked with bitumen, and were propelled by ten pairs of oars. Very 

 early, however, a mast that could be unstepped was added, and this 

 carried a single, square sail, about the width of the ship, which was 

 braced by four halyards, one from the masthead to the prow, one to 

 the stern, and one to either thwart. Without a keel and with an out- 



