like the boats of the Egyptians—which she much resembles in general shape, in mast, and in sail—these junks can only sail before the wind (which is usually favourable) in ascending the river Irawadi, and return with the current. [Illustration: FIG. 1. BURMESE JUNK.] A nation exhibits its characteristics, its exact state of progress and degree of refinement in three things: its art, its literature, and its ships. Indeed we might go so far as to affirm that these last are but a branch of the first. Just as the house was at first merely a thing of utility, becoming in the course of time adorned with carvings and decoration, so the ship, from being the rough, clumsy dug-out, with the advance of civilisation becomes adorned at first with animals’ heads, with eyes, with a human head, with coloured hull, and at a subsequent stage with sails bearing devices of high artistic merit. Finally, gilded portholes and gilded sterns were added to the ship, so that, to quote the description of Charles I.’s _Sovereign of the Seas_, “she was so gorgeously ornamented with carving and gilding that she seemed to have been designed rather for a vain display of magnificence than for the service of the State.” The development of the ship, then, is parallel to the development of the State. In the rude ages she is a rough creature, remaining more like the tree out of which she is made than a thing of being. In the hands of a nation that has reached a high degree of civilisation, though she is still made of oak from the forest, yet she has lost all resemblance to the tree-trunk. Instead, she has acquired a most wonderful personality of her own. The wood of the tree has become merely the means of expressing the most admirable combination of delicacy and strength, of slender lines and powerful masses. Thus we must go to the East, the birthplace of civilisation, to trace the beginnings of our subject. We shall for this reason start from Egypt and Phœnicia, and, tracing the development through Greek and Roman times, advance to Northern and Western Europe and further west still to America. And in covering a period of roughly 8000 years, in spite of the enormous difference in time, in nations, in geographical and other conditions, we shall find that no feature is more amazing than the extraordinary spirit of conservatism which has spread itself universally over both ships and their sailors. So remarkable are the examples of this, even under widely opposed conditions, that I have thought it worth while here to submit some of the more important ones as being worthy of special consideration.