THE following is an extract from a letter I received from the governor
of Dartmouth, A. H. Holdsworth, Esq., a man of great research and
scientific attainments. I have every reason to believe that its perusal
may prove interesting to some, as well as instructive to others; I offer
no apology, therefore, for giving it so largely. The letter I allude to
was dated “Brookhill, October 15th, ♦1845:”――
♦ ‘1485’ replaced with ‘1845’
MY DEAR SIR――I believe that man, as he was created, had a mind in
that state of perfection which we can best understand by the term
‘civilized’――that is, capable of discerning the means of gratifying
every wish and providing for every want, whether bodily or intellectual,
that circumstances brought upon him, until society became so corrupt
that the Almighty found it necessary to destroy the whole human race,
except Noah and his family, whom he preserved in the ark, and that
through them the same civilized mind was transmitted to those that were
born to them, and to those who descended from them; and that all the
heathen nations (as they are now termed) have fallen off from that
state in which their forefathers existed, and that as the local distance
increased which divided their several families from the parent stock, so
did their minds become more degraded and ignorant, until they arrived at
the state in which they are now found, endued with sufficient intellect
to enable them to avail themselves of the means which nature has placed
around them to supply their bodily wants, but continuing from father to
son in the same state of mental ignorance, and devoid of all improvement
or intellectual enjoyment. I was first impressed with this view of the
heathen nations from finding that the same canoes exist at this time,
the same rafts or balzas are seen on the same coasts as were found
there when those coasts or islands were first visited by our earliest
navigators, although our own ships have been so much improved during the
same space of time as to be most sensibly distinguishable.
“These facts induced me to ask myself this question. If we can trace the
same unimproved canoes through such a series of years, how happened it
that ships were ever built? How did those persons who first discovered
the people possessing these canoes, get the ships which conveyed them
to those distant regions? Or why should one set of men turn their canoes
into ships (if our ships grew out of canoes), and other sets of men
never make any improvement in theirs? Why have not the natives of the
coasts of Africa turned their canoes into ships, as well as the natives
of Britain? To solve these questions I had to trace back the history of
shipping from century to century――rising and falling with the nations
to which it belonged, varying in size and form as adopted by newly
civilized countries, but maintaining the same principle of construction;
and when I searched from nation to nation in the Mediterranean, and
thence up the Nile to Thebes, I could not find any period of time
in which it did not appear that ships have existed――that is, vessels
composed of ribs and planks with beams and decks, as are seen at the
present day. We may pass over the more recent time and go back 1000
years before the birth of Christ. We then find Solomon with a fleet
of ships in the Red Sea, and we read in the 1st of Kings――‘And Hiram
sent in the navy his servants, shipmen that had knowledge of the sea,
with the servants of Solomon.’ Hiram, therefore, had long possessed a
fleet; and 450 years before Solomon’s time we find Balaam saying――‘And
ships shall come from the coast of Chittim and shall afflict Asshur,’
from which it is clear that Balaam must have known that those whom he
addressed understood what he meant by ships, or his prophecy would have
been useless. But there is little doubt but that at that time there
was a large fleet of ships in the Red Sea. Sesostris is said to have
had about four hundred sail of war ships, with which he carried his
army to the conquest of various countries down the coast, and which are
represented on the walls of his palace at Thebes. The pictures on the
walls of the tombs also afford much information on this subject, as well
as some on the inside of mummy cases.
“The size of these vessels is to a certain extent ascertained by the
number of men which are represented within them, but more accurately
by the models of two vessels which were found in a tomb, and brought
to England by Mr. Salt. These were bought for the British Museum at
the sale of his Egyptian relics. I have measured them, and taking
the figures on the deck as a scale, and calling them six feet, I make
the vessel to be thirty feet long, six feet wide, and four feet deep;
and when to the size is added the form, which is that of an irregular
half-moon, it is clear that such vessels could not be made out of a
single tree, but must have been regularly built with ribs, planks, and
beams to support the deck. And as these were said to have been found in
an early tomb, it is clear to my mind that the persons who built them
must have been in a state of civilization, that they had a thorough
knowledge of the art, and that it affords a proof that those persons
who established themselves at Thebes at a very short space of time after
the Mosaic flood, had no difficulty in constructing vessels, when such
machines were found necessary to them. If the facts are, as I believe
them to be――viz., that the canoes of the uncivilized nations or tribes
are in the same state as when first seen by our earliest navigators, and
if we cannot find any trace that canoes were used by the Thebans before
they constructed vessels or ships, although we can find boats or smaller
vessels of different sorts existing at the same time with such ships
or vessels upon the waters of the Nile, have we not a right to believe
that the ship is the work of a civilized mind, and that it has been
constructed where it has been required by the civilized inhabitants
of our globe from the earliest periods of its existence? Much might be
added as to the state of shipping at the various periods of history, as
nations rose into eminence and fell again into obscurity, and as nations
became civilized and adopted the usages of those who had preceded them
in civilization; but this is not necessary to the subject at present.
There are a variety of other things which are to be found equally
curious and worthy of notice, indirectly connected with this subject,
but leading to very different considerations; I will not, therefore,
touch upon them.”