These excavations have revealed discoveries of two kinds, which we shall deal with as we proceed. In Great Britain, and in Germany, various examples of the prehistoric “dug-out” have been unearthed. The Museums of Edinburgh, York, Bremen, and Kiel, happily contain these interesting craft, preserved for the wonder of future generations. The second class is more valuable still, and far more picturesque, for thanks to the burial customs of the old sea-chiefs, there have been excavated from certain mounds in Norway, wonderful old Viking ships in a state of preservation that is remarkable when we consider how many centuries they have lain under the earth. Therefore, fortunate as we deemed ourselves in being able to have such sources of information as models and reproductions of the ships of Southern Europe, we are far more happy in our present section for we can go to the fountain head direct—the ships themselves. To us members of the Anglo-Saxon race, the importance of the forces at work during the period we are about to consider cannot be lightly estimated. The influence of the Viking, or double-ended type of ship, dominated the whole of the coast-line from Norway to the land as far south as the northern shores of Spain, right from the period that followed the construction of mere dug-outs, until almost the close of the fifteenth century of our era. That is to say, as soon as ever the North European became sufficiently civilised to _build_ rather than to hew his craft: as soon as he undertook the making of ships rather than of boats—he came under the power of that naval architecture, which we see illustrated in the ships of the Veneti and Scandinavians; and, irrespective of geographical position, of language, of tribe or of nation, the civilised inhabitants living on that vast stretch of littoral, from the North Cape to the southern boundary of the Bay of Biscay, continued in the same conventions of design and build for many hundreds of years. It is a striking proof of the accurate knowledge in shipbuilding and ship-designing possessed by these early Northerners when we remember that, even to this day, that influence, far from disappearing, shows a strong tendency to increase, at any rate, in the architecture of yachts and fishing boats. Thus, the Egyptians, who moulded for ever afterwards the lines of the ships of the Mediterranean, have in Northern Europe, their counterpart in the Norsemen. What the galley was to the south, the Viking ship has been to us living in colder climes.