Note 31 — Chapter II · Food, Cannibalism, Mammals Fish, Hunting, and Fishing.

We will quote but one of the discoveries made in England. In 1881 a canoe, hollowed out of the trunk of a tree, was found at Bovey-Tracey in Devonshire. It lay in a deposit of brick-earth more than twenty-nine feet below the highest level reached by the waters of the Bovey.31 It was more than thirty-five inches wide, and its length could not be exactly determined, the workmen having broken it in getting it out. An eminent archæologist is of opinion that this boat dates from the Glacial epoch, perhaps even from a more remote time. If this hypothesis, the responsibility of which we leave to him, be correct, this is the most ancient witness in existence of prehistoric navigation. We must also mention a boat found near Brigg (Lincolnshire), a few feet from a little river that flows into the Humber. It is about forty-five feet long by three and a half feet wide, and is some three feet high. The prow is fluted. There are no traces of a mast, though the size of the boat must have made it difficult to manage with oars alone.