200 OUR HERITAGE THE SEA 



connection with our islands, and the record of their 

 maritime position in the pages of Holy Writ (Ezekiel 

 xxvii.). They were a nautical and enterprising people, 

 no doubt; but it is quite certain that they have no 

 claim to having been in any sense the pioneers of sea- 

 faring. Not only so, but in their voyagings they 

 were far less venturesome and enterprising than those 

 earlier mariners of whom we have no records, save the 

 indirect ones given by their works yet remaining to 

 show what manner of people they were. Probably the 

 earliest seafarers of whom we shall ever get any record 

 were the Chinese, with their immemorial civilization, 

 and the initative, which though they have now lost 

 all trace of it, they certainly did once possess in a 

 very marked degree. That they have not left their 

 physical characteristics more definitely stamped upon 

 the inhabitants of the far away lands, which they 

 undoubtedly visited, may be plausibly explained by 

 the fact that they were never colonists that is, the 

 Chinese of the maritime provinces were then, as now, 

 merely trading pilgrims with an intense desire to 

 return to their native soil when they had realized 

 a modest competence. I have purposely mentioned 

 the maritime provinces of China, because it is a matter 

 beyond dispute that the Mongols did colonize Eastern 

 Europe as the Huns, and that their facial peculiarities 

 are faithfully reproduced there to this day. 



But all speculations as to the place where sea- 

 faring may be said to have had its origin must be 

 in the very nature of things based upon the shadowy 

 foundation of guesswork. One solid fact, however, 

 remains that somewhere upon ocean's borders, some- 

 where in the far back days of mankind's history, some 



