Note 539 — Chapter IX · —Oceans And Enclosed Seas

The second step in the elaboration of water conveyance was made when mere flotation was succeeded by various devices to secure displacement. The evolution is obvious. The primitive raftsman of the Mesopotamian rivers wove his willow boughs and osiers into a large, round basket form, covered it with closely sewn skins to render it water-tight, and in it floated with his merchandise down the swift current from Armenia to Babylon. These were the boats which Herodotus saw on the Euphrates,539 and which survive to-day.540 According to Pliny, the ancient Britons used a similar craft, framed of wicker-work and covered with hide, in which they crossed the English and Irish channels to visit their kinsfolk on the opposite shores. This skin boat or coracle or currach still survives on the rivers of Wales and the west coast of Ireland, where it is used by the fishermen and considered the safest craft for stormy weather.541 It recalls the "bull-skin boat" used in pioneer days on the rivers of our western plains, and the skiffs serving as passenger ferries to-day on the rivers of eastern Tibet.542 It reappears among the Arikara Indians of the upper Missouri,543 and the South American tribes of the Gran Chaco.544 The first wooden boat was made of a tree trunk, hollowed out either by fire or axe. The wide geographical distribution of the dug-out and its survival in isolated regions of highly civilized lands point it out as one of those necessary and obvious inventions that must have been made independently in various parts of the world.