"A sturdy, thrifty, hardworking, law-loving people, fond of good cheer and strong drink, of shrewd, blunt speech, and a stubborn reticence, when speech would be useless or foolish; a people clean-living, faithful to friend and kinsman, truthful, hospitable, liking to make a fair show, but not vain or boastful; a people with perhaps little play of fancy or great range of thought, but cool-thinking, resolute, determined, able to realise the plainer facts of life clearly, and even deeply."[16] Blend these qualities with those of the Gael, and what infinite possibilities appear; for the characteristics of the two races supplement each other. Fuse them together in proper proportions for a few generations, the improvident and dreamy with the thrifty and energetic, the voluble with the reticent, the romantic and humorous with the truthful and blunt of speech, the fiery and impulsive with the sober of thought, and how greatly is the type improved in the new race evolved from the union of both. Turning from eugenics to more practical matters, it was the brain and the manual skill of the Viking that invented and perfected our modern sailing ship. Stripped of its barbaric excrescences at stem and stern, and of its rows of shields and ornaments, the lines of the Viking ship of Gokstad[17] found there buried but entire, are the lines of our herring boats of fifty years ago. Sharp and partly decked at stem and stern only, like those boats, the Viking ship could live, head to the waves, even in the roughest sea. It was, too, a living thing, a new type of vessel handy to row or sail, and far in advance not only of the early British ship and Pictish coracle[18] but also of the Roman galley with lines like those of a canal barge, and also far in advance of the Saxon ship of war or merchandise. The only points of difference between the older type of herring boat and the Viking ship were the stepping of the mast further forward and the use of the fixed rudder in the modern vessel.