Note 28 — Chapter II · Food, Cannibalism, Mammals Fish, Hunting, and Fishing.

Sir W. Wilde describes several boats from the marshes and peat-bogs of Ireland,28 many of which have handles cut in the wood at the ends, by the help of which they could easily be dragged along overland. Sir W. Wilde adds that the Irish also used curraghs, or coracles, which were mere wicker frames covered with the skins of oxen. These frail barks introduce us to a new mode of navigation; they are met with not only in tire different countries of Europe, but also in America, and were in use there in pre-Columbian times. Even more interesting examples have been found in Scotland.29 Towards the close of last century a pirogue was taken from the ancient bed of the Clyde at Glasgow. Since then have been discovered, at depths varying from six to twelve feet, more than twenty similar boats. The deposits in which they lay had formerly been beneath the sea, but are now some twenty feet above the level of the ocean. Great changes have therefore taken place since these barks were launched upon the waves.30 Their mode of construction is an excellent indication of the date to which they belong. Some which are hollowed out of the trunks of oaks by the help of fire, or with a blunt tool, are supposed by Lyell to date from the Stone age. Others have clean-cut notches, evidently made with metal implements. Some are made of planks joined together with wooden pegs, and one canoe found in County Galway even contained copper nails. Most of the boats from the bed of the Clyde seem to have foundered in still waters. Some, however, were discovered in a vertical position, others had the keel uppermost, and these latter had evidently sunk in a storm. In one of these boats was a diorite hatchet of the kind characteristic of Neolithic times; another, the wood of which was perfectly black, had become as hard as marble, and in it was a cork plug. Then, as now, the oak which yields cork was foreign to the cold climate of Scotland.