Note 33 — Chapter II · Food, Cannibalism, Mammals Fish, Hunting, and Fishing.

These canoes, whatever their shape or size, can only have been worked by means of oars, yet oars have seldom been found. The Geneva Museum, however, has one which came from the muddy bed of an Italian lake, and others are preserved in the Royal Museum of Dublin, which have every sign of great antiquity. In de fault of the actual oars, we have other proofs of their use. Gross33 mentions a boat (Fig. 16) in which holes had been made in the upper parts of the sides to hold the oars. In 1882 a pirogue was taken out of the bed of the Rhone at Cordon (Ain), which had been half buried in the mud of the river. The wood was black and the upper portions were charred, but the middle part was still intact and very hard. The holes, pierced in the sides at regular intervals, may have served to keep the oars in place. The position of the rowers at the bottom of the boat was very unsatisfactory. It was not, however, until later that we find seats so placed as to enable the rowers to put out all their strength. At a recent meeting of the Anthropological Society (July 21, 1887) M. Letourneau observed that the rudder came into use very slowly. It was not known to the Egyptians or to the Phœnicians, nor, which is still more strange, to the Greeks and Romans. Their vessels, whatever their size, were guided by two large oars (gubernaculum) placed in the stern. The Chinese appear to have been the only people who were acquainted with the use of the rudder from time immemorial. It is probable that from them it passed to the Arabs and even perhaps to the people of Europe.