Roman Ships of the Third Cenfury A.D. (From Mosaic at Ostia.) 



are found in Polynesia, the Nile, and the shores of western 

 South America. Reeds and balsa wood made admirable sea- 

 going platforms in Egypt and Peru, and the earliest legends of 

 the South Pacific tell of men with beards arriving from the 

 land of the sun on great sailing rafts. Oddly enough we have 

 seen that the Central American legends also tell of similar 

 migrations from the east. Without regard to the set opinions 

 of various schools of anthropologists and geographers, it would 

 certainly seem logical that with the craft they had people on 

 the move would most likely go downwind with the trades and 

 be taken willy-nilly with the great east-west equatorial cur- 

 rents. It is also interesting to note that two precisely similar 



Portuguese Caravel of 

 about 1450. (From a painting 

 in the church of Madre de 

 Dios, Lisbon.) 



