-•5 The Guinea Trade 



navigation of these African waters by such vessels meant the 

 victory of the sail over the oar. 



This Wcis a movement which had been long developing 

 in the Mediterranean world and in the Baltic and North Sea, 

 as also contemporaneously in the Indian Ocean and the Sea 

 of China. Man's first means of locomotion over the surface 

 of the water was punting, urging forward his raft or hollowed 

 log by the leverage of a pole pushed into the river bed or the 



32. A CARAVEL 



bank. Next came the use of a shorter, broader stick as a 

 paddle, and so developed the oar. On the estuary of the 

 Cameroons River in West Africa I have seen the natives fasten 

 a tall, bushy frond from the Raphia palm into the prow of 

 their canoe, and this possibly, or some such idea, was the 

 commencement of the sail. A skin, a stretch of bark-cloth, 

 a sheet of matting (as in the Far East) attached to an upright 

 punting-pole, gradually transformed itself into the simple lateen 

 sail which existed concurrently with oars as a means of pro- 



79 



