commercial relations for a long period anterior to the Julian invasion;[1] and we have Cæsar's word for it that when, in his advance, he came into contact with the Veneti, who dwelt near the mouth of what is now the Loire, he found that he had to fight not only them, but also a British flotilla acting with them.
Unhappily, Cæsar does not expressly describe the vessels of the British contingent. It has been seen that he elsewhere mentions certain British craft as having been made of wicker covered with hide. Of these he speaks contemptuously, when he criticises their suitability for war; and Lucan[2] takes up much the same position. But neither Cæsar nor Lucan applies this criticism to the craft that co-operated with the Veneti; and, when we pay regard to the fact that to enter the mouth of the Loire our ancestors, in addition to crossing the stormy Channel, must have braved the terrors of the Bay of Biscay, we are almost driven to the conclusion that the ships which helped the Veneti were not hide canoes. It is much more likely, seeing that Cæsar devotes no special description to them, that they were not very different from the ships of the Veneti themselves. These he does describe, and in some detail. "Their ships,"[3] he says, "were built and fitted out in this manner. The bottoms were somewhat flatter than those of our vessels, the better to adapt them to the shallows, and to enable them to withstand without danger the ebbing of the tide. Their bows, as likewise their sterns, were very lofty and erect, the better to bear the magnitude of the waves and the violence of the tempests. The hull of each vessel was entirely of oak, to resist the shocks and assaults of that stormy sea. The benches for the rowers were made of strong beams of about a foot in breadth, and were fastened with iron bolts an inch thick. They fastened their anchors with iron chains[4] instead of with cables; and they used skins and a sort of thin pliant leather for sails, either because they lacked canvas and were ignorant of the art of making sailcloth, or more probably because they believed that canvas sails were not so fit to bear the stress of tempests and the rage and fury of the winds, and to drive ships of that bulk and burden. Our fleet and the vessels
