Although for years after the Flood[5] the raft may have been the only form of vessel for carrying heavy burthens, other means of flotation must soon have suggested themselves; and of these, the inflated skins of animals would seem to have prevailed the most generally and the most widely. Thus on the ancient monuments recently discovered by Mr. Layard, we find numerous representations of the Assyrians crossing a river—probably the Tigris—on inflated skins; and rafts may also be seen on which goods and men are floating down similarly supported.[6] The same practice is still in use among the present inhabitants of the country, and is also noticed as common on the Setlege by Baron Hügel, in his interesting “Travels in Cashmir.”[7] Baron Hügel also speaks of baskets, suspended from ropes firmly tied to each shore, for crossing the mountain waters of the same river; while _coracles_—basket-work over which leather or prepared flannel has been stretched—may still be seen in Wales, thus enabling the inhabitants to fish, and to cross streams not otherwise fordable. It is also worthy of note that Pliny[8] alludes to this custom, where he states that “Even now, in British waters, vessels of vine-twigs sewn round with leather are used.” Mr. Layard[9] likewise speaks of still finding on the Tigris light boats called _terradas_, constructed by the Southern Mesopotamians of twisted reeds, rendered watertight by bitumen, and often of sufficient consistency to support four or five men. As a remarkable proof of the long persistency of custom and of trade, we may add that the bitumen of Babylonia was exported to Egypt so early as the reign of Thothmes III., B.C. 1500, from the Is (now Hit) of Herodotus, where it is still abundant. The _balza_ of the western coast of South America, in use within the last hundred years, appears to have been a raft of logs of very light wood carefully fastened together, and capable of carrying occasionally as much as twenty tons.[10] Such were probably the rude beginnings of the art of ship-building. [Sidenote: Earliest boats or ships.] Though it is impossible to give any authentic details of forms and means of navigation, such as those we have mentioned—remembrances as they are of pre-historic times—we need not doubt that the earliest people who practised navigation, in any sense after the manner since recognised, by ships or boats as distinguished from rafts, were the inhabitants of the eastern coast of the Mediterranean, and, notably, the Phœnicians of Sidon and Tyre.