The barge she sat in, like a burnish’d throne, Burnt on the water: the poop was beaten gold; Purple the sails, and so perfumed, that The winds were love-sick with ’em: the oars were silver; Which to the tune of flutes kept stroke, and made The water which they beat to follow faster, As amorous of their strokes. For her own person, It beggar’d all description. She did lie In her pavilion, (cloth of gold of tissue,) O’er-picturing that Venus, where we see The fancy out-work nature. On each side her, Stood pretty dimpled boys, like smiling cupids, With diverse-colour’d fans, whose wind did seem To glow the delicate cheeks which they did cool; And what they undid, did.—— Her gentlewomen, like the Nereids, or So many mermaids, tended her i’ th’ eyes’, And made their bends adorning; at the helm A seeming mermaid steers; the silken tackles Swell with the touches of those flower-soft hands, That yarely frame the office. From the barge A strange invisible perfume hits the sense Of the adjacent wharfs.[1699] ----- Footnote 1697: Goguet, iv. 260. Footnote 1698: Theoph. Hist. iv. 8. 4. Footnote 1699: Anthony and Cleopatra, Act ii. Scene 3. ----- An ancient anonymous writer on the art military describes a vessel closely resembling our steamboats in construction, but in which bullocks, stationed in the hold, worked the paddle-wheels instead of an engine. It flew along the water, says the author, without oars or sails, simply by the impulses of wheels, which, rising partly above the waves, operated, when in action, like a succession of oars. Ropes and cables[1700] were manufactured in antiquity from a great variety of materials. At first, the cordage most in use would appear to have been composed of twisted thongs; for which, in process of time, was substituted goats’ hair,[1701] the Spanish broom,[1702] the bark of the cornel[1703] and linden-tree,[1704] with byblos, hemp,[1705] and flax.[1706] The enormous cables which supported the bridge thrown by Xerxes over the Hellespont were manufactured from mixed materials, of which two-thirds were byblos and one-third white flax.[1707] They were of dimensions so vast that a piece half a yard in length weighed one hundred and twenty-five pounds. ----- Footnote 1700: Schol. Aristoph. Eq. 129. Æschyl. 175. Footnote 1701: Geop. xviii. 9. Common sacks and cushions for rowers on board the galleys were likewise manufactured from the same material. Cf. Var. de Re Rustic. ii. 7. Columel. 7. 6. 2. Footnote 1702: Athen. v. 40. Footnote 1703: Plut. Alexand. § 18. Footnote 1704: Theoph. Hist. Plant. v. 7. 5. Footnote 1705: Dioscor. iii. 165. Footnote 1706: Herod. vii. 25. Footnote 1707: Id. vii. 34. 36. -----