The first portable or hand gun consisted of a simple iron or brass tube fastened to a straight stock of wood. Horsemen used the first guns, and fired them by placing the end of the stock against the breast and letting the barrel rest on a fork fastened to the saddle. The gun was discharged by applying a lighted match to a touch-hole in the top of the barrel. One kind of powder was used for priming; another for firing. Before the invention of cartridges, the powder and bullets were loaded separately at the muzzle, with some kind of packing between. The colonial rifles in America were loaded in this way. In a fight at close quarters, after a gun had been once discharged, the soldier had to fight with his sword. About the middle of the seventeenth century, the bayonet was invented, taking its name from the town of Bayonne, in France, where the inventor lived. The lighted match which soldiers originally carried for igniting their guns gave way to the flint and steel; and in 1807 a Scotch clergyman named Forsyth obtained a patent which led to the invention of the percussion cap. This improvement revolutionized the mechanism of firearms. Many improvements have been made recently in arms, so that cartridges containing cap, powder, and projectile are fed automatically into guns so delicately constructed that they have great carrying power, precision, and rapidity. From the dawn of human existence man has sought by some method or other to overcome natural barriers of water. The idea of the ship is as old almost as the race itself. The most primitive form of vessel was the raft. In prehistoric ages men made vessels by hollowing out the trunks of trees, either with fire or with such crude tools as they possessed. The Latin poet Virgil mentions "hollowed alders" used for boats, and indeed canoes were made from hollowed tree trunks as long ago as the Stone Age. The next step forward in the art of shipbuilding was the bark canoe. In countries where bark is scarce, small vessels were made of skins, felt, or canvas covered with pitch. In process of time, boats were made by fastening timbers together, and in this method the basic principle of modern shipbuilding was reached. It is the relation of ships to purposes of war that interests us here. When the curtain rose for the drama of civilization in Egypt five thousand years ago, men were fighting at sea. The oldest ships of which we have knowledge were Egyptian. The vessels of war were then propelled by oarsmen, who were protected from the missiles of the enemy by planks. On the Egyptian war-galleys there was often a projecting bow to which was attached a metal head for ramming the vessels of the enemy.