The countries along the northern and southern shores of the Mediterranean had attained a high degree of civilisation when the inhabitants of Western Europe and the British Islands were still more or less savage. What may be regarded as circumstantial evidence in support of the contention that the Phœnicians voyaged to Cornwall and Ireland is the similarity which exists in shape between the wicker shields, such as the Phœnicians are known to have used, and the wicker coracles which the Britons employed at the time of the invasion by Julius Cæsar. There must have been considerable intercourse between the Phœnicians and the dwellers in the valley of the Euphrates before the latter conquered the former; but whether the dwellers in Nineveh, or those by the sea, invented wicker boats, or whether both derived their knowledge of wicker boats from other sources, are points of no immediate importance. But what is of interest is that the British wicker coracles were covered with hides to make them watertight, that they had keels and gunwales, and that they were small enough to be used as shields if necessary, their dimensions being rather over 4 feet in length, with a breadth of about 3 feet, and a depth of a trifle over 12 inches. They were big enough to carry one man of average size. There are on the Euphrates to this day boats or rafts of proportionate dimensions, up to a maximum length of 40 or 50 feet over all, which are constructed with a light framework of wicker and timber, over which skins are stretched to keep them watertight. These boats, when laden, drift down the river with the current, and, on reaching their destination, their cargo and skins are sold and the framework is made up into a package and returned upon the back of an ass to the port of departure. These cargo boats have been humorously referred to at a meeting of the Institute of Marine Engineers as of “one ass-power.” So far as Britain is concerned, the shipping of each coast seems to have developed under the influence of the foreign shipping with which it mostly came in contact. The east coast was largely concerned with the Danes, and the south coast with its neighbours across the Channel. The Danes and Vikings developed a type of vessel peculiarly their own. The best specimen yet brought to light is that known as the Gokstad ship. [Illustration: AN ANGLO-SAXON SHIP OF ABOUT THE NINTH CENTURY. (_From Strutt._)] The Viking ships must have walked the waters almost with the grace of motion of a modern yacht, and when the great square sail was hoisted, bearing the escutcheon of some dread sea-rover, they must have been fascinating emblems of human skill and power no less than of the noblest and the basest passions of mankind.