Of two-masted rigs, the oldest is the _brig_, which has square sails on both masts, just like the main and mizzen masts of a full-rigged ship. Then there is the _brigantine_, a slight modification of the brig, and the _hermaphrodite brig_, or _brig-schooner_, with fore-and-aft sails on the after mast. This kind of vessel has been greatly modified (one of its most extraordinary forms was the _ketch_), is less common now than formerly, and took its name, which is derived from the same source as “brigand,” from the fact that it was the most common rig of the pirates of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Its place was largely taken for small vessels by a purely American invention, and one of the greatest of Yankee notions—the _schooner_. The schooner was originally small, and had two masts; but now is often built of great size, with as many as five or six masts, each of which has a fore-and-aft rig—that is, a sloop’s mainsail and gaff-topsail on every mast, with forestaysail and several jibs in front, and staysails between. Sometimes a square sail is placed on the foretopmast, which makes the vessel a _topsail schooner_. The first one was built by a Gloucester sea-captain about 1817, and proved so satisfactory that all the fishing-fleet were soon rigged in that way, whence the idea has spread to all parts of the world. Until recently, however, vessels large enough to have three masts were always “square-rigged,” as _barks_, _barkentines_, or _ships_; for, although we have come to speak of any big vessel as a “ship,” yet in proper nautical language a ship is a vessel rigged in a particular way, and it is nothing else. In fact, in olden times they were sometimes very small—too small to be economical, as we now know. The “Naval Chronicle” for 1807 contained an account of a full-rigged ship of only thirty-six tons’ burden, which for one hundred and thirty years previous to that date had been cruising about the English coast, and may be doing so yet, for aught I know. [Illustration: A FIJI ISLAND OUT-RIGGED CANOE, APPROACHING A FULL-RIGGED SHIP HOVE-TO.]