AMERICAN INSTITUTE. 397 



have been the art of sailing, the invention of which, as well as of let- 

 ters, and astronomy, belong to the Phoenicians or inhabitants of Tyre and 

 Sidun. For Jason, and the Argonauts who first sailed under Jason, from 

 Greece to Colchis, in the ship "^?-go," in quest of the Golde?i fleece, — 

 that is, of commerce, flourished long after the Phoenicians were a power- 

 ful nation. The invention of sails is ascribed to ^olus, the " Grod of the 

 Winds ;" by others to Dsedalus. These sails were first made of skins, 

 which the Veneti, a people of Gaul, used even in the time of Julius Caesar. 



The next and most common method of moving vessels among the ancients 

 was the well known system of rowing, exerting the manual strength of 

 from one to three hundred men, according to the size of the boat, and 

 having two, three, four and five rows or banks of oars, and called Biremes, 

 Triremes, quadremes, quinqueremes. The Grecians, however, had vessels 

 by sixteen tiers of oars. 



While we incline to the idea that the vessels of the ancients were very 

 small, compared with those of modern times, and are somewhat fortified in 

 the idea by the mention made by Cicero that a vessel of 2,000 amphorae, 

 viz., 56 tons, was considered a large ship, (Cic. Fan., 12, 15), we are 

 told by other authors that Ptolemy built a vessel 280 cubits, i. e., 420 feet 

 long ; another 300 feet ; the former 7,182, the latter 3,197 tons burthen ; and 

 we are told by Pliny, the ship which brought from Egypt the great obelisk 

 that stood in the circus of the Vatican, in the time of Caligula, beside the 

 obelisk, carried about 1,138 tons of ballast. 



It has been asserted that boats with paddle wheels, turned by oxen 

 within the vessel, were known to the ancient Egyptians, and it is said that 

 there are representations of such vessels in some of the Egyptian tombs. 



Boats, impelled by horses, oxen or men, were known to the Ro- 

 mans. Vulturius, in his rare and curious work, De Re Militari, published 

 in 1472, gives representations of two wheel boats, one having a pair, 

 the other five pair of wheels. These wheels, containing four paddles each, 

 were turned by a crank in their axles, and in the one with five pair 

 of wheels, the cranks were connected by ropes, so as to give simultaneous 

 motion. 



Wheel boats were known to the Chinese, and in the 8th vol. of the 

 " Memoirs of the Jesuit Missionaries at Pekin," published at Paris, 1782, 

 is an engraving and description of a vessel of war with two paddle wheels 

 on a side, turned by men. 



Many writers recommended the use of paddle wheels, or revolving oars, 

 for the propulsion of vessels, long before the experiment arising from the 

 use of steam. Some proposed to work them by capstans ; others by a 

 tread- wheel ; others by a crank turned b}'' hand ; and as far back as 1682, 

 a wheel boat, propelled by horses, was used on the Thames. 



Blasco de Garray is mentioned as the first who exhibited, in 1543, " an 

 engine by which ships and vessels of the largest size could be propelled, 

 even in a calm, without the aid of sails or oars." 



Beyond the fact that Garray used a pair of side wheels, and a large 



