the whole art of going to windward was revealed. My third reason is based on the fact that the Saxons, who settled around the mouth of the Elbe and subjugated the Thuringians after the death of Alexander the Great, did possess this knowledge of tacking. Unless it were with the intention of tacking, it is difficult to see why the dhow, or nugger rig should have prevailed. But we do know that this form of sail was extant about the time of Alexander; therefore, tacking must be at least as old as the death of Alexander in the fourth century B.C. A squaresail-ship whether ancient or modern will go no nearer the wind than seven points, whereas the fore-and-after will sail as close as five. This, as soon as the fact was fully realised on the Nile, would hasten that day when tacking was first found out. Egypt, after flourishing so mightily for so many hundreds of years, had its decline not less than its rise. Just as the earlier Egyptian sculptures are superior to the later ones in sincerity and fidelity, becoming subsequently more stiff and formal, so her shipping eventually deteriorated, and the mastery of the seas passed into the hands of the Phœnicians. CHAPTER III. ANCIENT SHIPS OF PHŒNICIA, GREECE, AND ROME.[10] It is almost impossible to exaggerate the potent influence exercised by the Phœnicians, as successors of the Egyptians, in being the maritime nation of the world. Happy in their origin by the Persian Gulf, fortunate, too, in having had the Egyptians before them, and so benefiting by the knowledge and experience of the latter, they had developed and prospered through the centuries parallel with the Dynastic peoples. Much that we should wish to know about the Phœnicians is wanting, but we have more than adequate material for the means of realising something of the range and intensity of their sway.