modern full-rigged ship or yacht. This illustration has been taken from an amphora found in Upper Egypt and now in the British Museum. The date ascribed to it by the ablest Egyptologists is that of the Pre-Dynastic period, which for the sake of clearness we may regard as about 6000 B.C. [Illustration: FIG. 3. EGYPTIAN SHIP OF ABOUT 6000 B.C.] On other vases of this period, some of which may also be seen in the British Museum, are to be found curious crescent-shaped designs that have been sometimes taken for primitive ships by previous writers. Even to the most imaginative it must have been difficult to have given these curious drawings the right to be called boats. The extraordinary erections on what would be the deck, have not any right to be called masts or sails. To any one with the slightest practical knowledge of boats and their ways, it is amusing to find that even these primitive ideas should have been thought to depict any kind of river craft. But I have been enabled to discuss this matter with such eminent Egyptologists as Dr. Wallis Budge, the Keeper of the Egyptian and Assyrian Antiquities in the British Museum, and Mr. H. R. Hall, both of whom are of the opinion that these designs do not represent ships at all. Dr. Budge suggests that they represent “zarebas,” a word that became very familiar to English people during Kitchener’s campaign in Egypt. In that case, the structures that have been mistaken for masts would represent erections to frighten away enemies or wild beasts. Another theory is that the series of straight lines below what was taken for the ship’s hull, and which were wrongly supposed to represent waves, are perhaps the piles on which the dwelling is built. I have, therefore, omitted such designs as not bearing on the subject of sailing ships.