16 THE OCEAN. 
tries many thousand miles apart would be attended 
with difficulties so great as to be practically insur- 
mountable. Add to this the natural barriers pre- 
sented by lofty mountain ranges and impassable 
rivers, as well as the dangers arising from ferocious 
animals and from hostile nations, and we shall see 
that with the existing power and skill of man, com- 
merce in such a condition would be almost unknown, 
and man would be little removed from a state of bar- 
barism. The Ocean, however, spreading itself over 
three-fourths of the globe, and penetrating with in- 
numerable sinuosities into the land, so as to bring, 
with the aid of the great rivers, the facilities of navi- 
gation comparatively near to every country, affords 
a means of transport unrivalled for safety, speed, and 
convenience. In very early ages men availed them- 
selves of naval communication. We find repeated 
mention made of ships by Moses;* and in the 
dying address of the patriarch Jacob to his sons, he 
speaks of “a haven for ships;”+ while Job, who 
was probably contemporary with Abraham, alludes 
to them as an emblem of swiftness,t which would 
seem to imply that navigation had then attained 
considerable perfection, nearly four thousand years 
ago. In profane history the earliest mention of 
navigation is that of the voyage of the ship Argo 
into the Kuxine, which took place probably about 
three thousand years ago. What a contrast be- 
tween her timorous and creeping course, and the 
arrowy speed and precision of a modern Atlantic 
#* Numb. xxiv. 24; and Deut. xxviii. 68. + Gen. xlix. 13. 
t Job ix. 26. 
