OCEAN, THE UNIVERSAL HIGHWAY 223 



age as to the size of the unknown world, as if the 

 Spaniards and Portuguese had got so far ahead of 

 them that they could only expect leavings, and, of 

 course, they could form no estimate of what those 

 leavings were likely to consist. In any case, however, 

 the traffic with neighbouring countries needed develop- 

 ment, for there was a growing demand everywhere for 

 the commodities that some other country produced 

 which in no other way could be so cheaply and easily 

 procured as by sea. What has puzzled many, though, 

 is the slow and curious development of marine archi- 

 tecture. Of course, all evolution is from the simple 

 to the complex, but in the case of ships, that complexity 

 should indeed have, in modern times, been entirely 

 confined to the interior equipment of the vessel. We 

 are really now in the twentieth century, with our 

 finest ships, not far removed from the model favoured 

 by the Vikings in their long ships, or, to go still 

 farther back, to the Phoenicians with their galleys. 

 Yet in this period, when all ocean secrets were yield- 

 ing themselves passively to mariners of sufficient 

 daring to seek them out, a curious degradation of 

 marine construction set in a sort of recrudescence of 

 barbaric display without regard to efficiency, such 

 as may even now be witnessed on the Irrawaddi, or 

 among some of the more remote South Sea Islands. 



Underwater the general contour of the vessels 

 remained the same, but their upper works began to 

 show a burden of fantastic ornamentation which we 

 should have thought would have struck a practical 

 seaman even in that early day as cumbrous, out of 

 place, and, above all, dangerous in the extreme by 

 reason of its making the vessels crank, or top-heavy. 



