It was at Venice in 1202 that some of the leading pilgrims assembled to negotiate for a fleet to be used in the fourth crusade. The crusaders agreed to pay the Venetians before sailing eighty-four thousand marks of silver, and to share with them all the booty taken by land or sea. The republic undertook to supply flat-bottomed vessels enough to convey four thousand five hundred knights, and twenty thousand soldiers, provisions for nine months, and a fleet of galleys. “Surrounded by the silver streak,” our hardy forefathers often crossed to Ireland and France, prior to the first invasion of Britain by Julius Cæsar, B.C. 55, when he sailed from Boulogne with eighty vessels and 8,000 men, and with eighteen transports to carry 800 horses for the cavalry. In the second invasion he employed a fleet of 600 boats and twenty-five war-galleys, having with him five legions of infantry and 2,000 cavalry, a formidable army for the poor islanders to contend against. But their intercourse with the Romans speedily brought about commercial relations of importance. The pearl fisheries were then most profitable, while the “native” oyster was greatly esteemed by the Roman epicures, of whom Juvenal speaks in his fourth satire. He says they “Could at one bite the oyster’s taste decide, And say if at Circean rocks, or in The Lucrine Lake, or on the coast of Richborough, In Britain they were bred.” British oysters were exported to Rome, as American oysters are now-a-days to England. Martial also mentions another trade in one of his epigrams, that of basket-making— “Work of barbaric art, a basket, I From painted Britain came; but the Roman city Now calls the painted Briton’s art their own.” The smaller description of boats, other than galleys, employed by the Romans for transporting their troops and supplies, were the _kiulæ_, called by the Saxons _ceol_ or _ciol_, which name has come down to us in the form of _keel_, and is still applied to a description of barge used in the north of England. Thus “Weel may the keel row,” says the song, and on the “coaly Tyne,” a small barge carrying twenty-one tons four hundredweight is said to carry a “keel” of coals. The Romans must also have possessed large transport vessels, for within seventy or eighty years after they had gained a secure footing in this country, they received a reinforcement of 5,000 men in seventeen ships, or about 300 men, besides stores, to each vessel.