Evidence of various kinds still points to a cradle-land for the human family towards the western borders of Central Asia, and remote from its coasts: probably in that range of country stretching between the head-waters of the Indus and the Tigris. The earliest history of man that we possess represents the postdiluvian wanderers journeying eastward, and at length settling on a plain that long afterwards remained one of the chief centres of history. But the arts there developed belonged exclusively to a far inland people; and to this day the rude craft of the Tigris and the Euphrates betrays a total absence of maritime instinct or skill in navigation. The highest effort of their boat-builders is little more than to construct a temporary raft, on which themselves and their simple freight may float in safety down the current of the great river. Similar rafts are still in use by the Egyptians, formed of earthenware jars bound together by withes and cords, and covered with bulrushes. Like the corresponding river-craft of the Euphrates, these are steered down the Nile, never to return; for, on their arrival at Cairo, the rafts are broken up, and the jars sold in the bazaars. Such was the rudimentary condition of navigation in that great Asiatic hive of nations where man chiefly dwelt for centuries remote from the sea. But from thence the wanderers were scattered over the face of the whole earth. The primitive river-craft, therefore, found an early development into sea-craft; and oceanic migration gave a new character to the wanderings of the primeval nomads. Thenceforth, accordingly, those instinctive tendencies began to characterise certain branches of the human family, as leaders of maritime enterprise, which may be traced under very diverse degrees of social development: as in the Phœnicians, the Northmen, the Malays, and the Polynesians; while other tribes and nations, such as the Celts and the Fijians, though living on the coast, are tempted by no longings to voyage on the ocean’s bosom.