56 G. Elliot Smith on 



Ireland. Subsequently this exploitation extended to those parts 

 of Sweden where metals were discovered. Upon some of the 

 rocks and megalithic monuments in the neighbourhood of these 

 Scandinavian mines are preserved rough sketches of the ships in 

 which these Phoenician mariners travelled. Though these impres- 

 sionist drawings (Fig. 8), cut into the rough stones, are very crude, 

 they convey a clear idea of the outstanding features of the ships 

 which conveyed the first metal workers along che coasts of 

 Northern Europe. 



The type of ship thus depicted is so distinctive that we can 

 recognize it as identical in every essential respect with a much 

 more ancient model which was in use upon the East African and 

 Arabian Coasts, and from there spread to the uttermost limits of 

 Asia.^ 



In the accompanying sketches (Figs. 7 and 8), I have placed 

 in apposition a rough copy of the late Sir Henry Stanley's picture 

 of a boat seen by him on the Victoria Nyanza," and a crude 



Fig. 7 — A type of vessel still in use in Victoria Nyanza, after Sir 

 Henry Stanley. 



^ I have cited the evidence in my essay on " Ships, &c.," pp. 77 et seq. 

 But precisely the same type of ship which the forerunners of the Vikings 

 used in Scandinavian waters, perhaps ten centuries B.C., persists at the 

 present time upon the Great Lakes of Africa (Fig. 4). So peculiar and 

 distinctive is the mode of construction and the arbitrary method of deco- 

 ration of these vessels that we can use them as certain tokens of the spread 

 of (•i\ilization and the travel of ancient seamen from Egypt to Sweden. 



2 " Through the Dark Continent," 1878, Vol. I, p. 4-51, 



