Ancient Scandinavian boat found beneath a tumulus at Gogstadten.
Inlaying the foundations of the bridge of Les Invalides, Paris, a boat was taken out of the mud which had lain there for many centuries. Like most of those already mentioned, it had been made out of a single trunk roughly squared. Everywhere, we must repeat once again, man’s original ideas were the same; everywhere the tree floating on the top of the water excited his curiosity, and became the starting-point for one of his most important discoveries. Traces of similar attempts at navigation are met with in other parts of France; a canoe was found in the Loire near Saint Mars, and the Dijon Museum possesses another from the same river, the latter some sixteen feet long, and traces have been made out of what are supposed to have been seats, but may have been mere contrivances for strengthening the boat. A canoe taken last year from the bed of the Cher is of the shape of a trough closed at the end by pieces of wood fixed by means of vertical grooves. The prow had been shaped in the first instance in the trunk itself, and it was probably owing to an accident, a collision perhaps, that it had had to be mended in this way ([Fig. 15]).
Figure 15.
Ancient boat discovered in the bed of the Cher.
The Lake Dwellers of Switzerland owned boats from the time of their first settlement in their water homes. One of them found at Robenhausen is more than ten feet long, and is very shallow, varying from six to eight inches. Like most of those already mentioned, it was hollowed out of the trunk of a tree, bulging out towards the centre, and rounded at the ends. So far none but stone tools have been found at the station of Robenhausen, so that we must presume that it was with such tools that the boat was made. The lakes of Bienne and. Geneva, and the stations of Morges and Estavayer have also yielded boats which are doubtless less ancient than those of which I have just spoken. In nearly all of them the prow is curiously pointed. One of them from the Lake of Neuchâtel, large enough to bold twelve people, has a beak at the stern and a rounded prow; but there is no sign of any contrivance for keeping the oars in place.
Lastly, a boat bas been found in Switzerland some 3,900 feet above the valley of the Rhine, but no one can say how it came to be at such a height.
Figure 16.
