THE MEDITERRANEAN LOOKS WEST 79 



methods of making dugout canoes with boiUng water to soften 

 the wood and then with stone adzes are found in Burma and 

 British Colombia. Also the early drawings of reed boats or 

 balsa boats from the Nile, from Lake Tshad, and from Lake 

 Titicaca in the Andes are scarcely distinguishable in design or 

 methods of tying. How effective even balsa rafts can be in long 

 sea journeys was recently well illustrated when six young Scan- 

 dinavian scientists floated on such a raft, the Kon-Tikiy a dis- 

 tance of 4300 miles from Peru to Polynesia. 



These reed canoes were probably used in the Mediterranean 

 about 3,000 b.c. But the Egyptians soon progressed from reed 

 bundles to pine planking brought down from Lebanon. These 

 strakes were beveled at the inner edge, holes drilled, and then 

 bound tightly edge to edge with thongs so as to make a rela- 

 tively smooth and seaworthy hull. They had upcurling keels 

 that formed a prow good for beaching or for ramming an 

 enemy. The design of later Norse craft very closely follows the 

 early Egyptian craft. Sewn boats were found in Finland, Lap- 

 land, Norway, and the Shetland Isles as late as the seventeenth 

 century. An interesting feature of the early Mediterranean 

 craft in use up to about 1,000 b.c. was the ''A" or wishbone 

 mast made from two spars bound together at the top with the 

 lower ends fastened at opposite gunwales. This primitive 

 method of rigging ships growing out of a scarcity of timber in 

 the earliest times was diffused as far east as Burma and Cochin 

 China, where ribless construction and A-shape masts were 

 used possibly as early as 2,500 b.c. 



Before leaving the early records of ship construction which 

 largely have to do with Egyptian sources, it is worth mention- 

 ing that these Mediterranean craft had eyes painted on the 

 prows as magic against hostile influence on land and sea. So 

 had the China ships; and in the Norse sagas at the time of Eric 

 the Red in Greenland old Eric reprimands Leif his son for not 

 binding the eyes of the dragon head on his vessel, lest it bring 



