The next step in the building of boats was a method of fastening pieces of wood together in suitable form. This probably came from a desire for boats of larger size, which required greater strength, for man early became a trader and wished to transport goods. Bark could not support a heavy hull, and dugouts are necessarily limited in size, being constructed of the trunks of single trees, although dugouts fifty or sixty feet in length, or even longer, are not unknown. Probably the earliest boats of this new type were tied together by thongs or cords. Even to-day the natives of Madras, in India, build boats by this method, and similar types are to be found on the Strait of Magellan, on Lake Victoria Nyanza in Central Africa, and in the East Indies. Many of these have been very highly developed until now they are built of heavy hand-hewn boards fitted together with ridges on their inner sides, through which holes are bored for the thongs that lash them together. The boards are fastened together first, and later a frame is attached to the interior. This construction makes a very “elastic” boat which bends and twists in a seaway, but which, because of this “elasticity,” is able to navigate waters that would prove fatal to the more rigid types of crudely constructed boats. The Hindoos often use them in the heavy surf that drives in upon the beaches from the Bay of Bengal. [Illustration: A LARGE EGYPTIAN SHIP OF THE 18TH DYNASTY _The overhanging bow and stern were common on most early Egyptian ships, and the heavy cable, stretched from one end of the hull to the other and supported on two crutches, was used to strengthen these overhanging ends._] The introduction of this construction made boats of considerable size possible, and for the first time boats larger than anything that could possibly be called a canoe were successfully floated. From this form a further step was ultimately made in which the various parts were fastened together by the use of wooden pegs, and this was the most advanced type long centuries after the dawn of history. The Nile was navigated by such boats at the height of Egypt’s civilization, and Homer describes this type of boat as the one in which Ulysses wandered on his long and wearisome journey home. While the art of boat-building had been travelling this long, slow way, the art of propulsion had not been idle. Long since, the simple pole of the early savage had lost its usefulness, for men soon learned to navigate waters too deep for poles. The paddle followed, and was perfected to a very high point, as its use in all parts of the world still testifies. But further means were still to come, and by the time Ulysses started on his journey from the fallen city of Troy, both the sail and the oar, which for three thousand years were to be supreme as propelling forces, had come into use.