from Lebanon to make masts for thee. Of the oaks of Bashan have they made thine oars . . . have made thy benches of ivory. . . . Fine linen with broidered work from Egypt was that which thou spreadest forth to be thy sail; blue and purple from the isles of Elishah was that which covered thee . . . thy pilots, thy caulkers, and all thy men of war that are in thee, . . . shall fall into the midst of the seas in the day of thy ruin."
This justly celebrated chapter is one of the most ancient records of shipping bequeathed to us, and bears testimony to the great antiquity of pleasure-craft; for, as we have seen, among the ancients purple sails were carried only on vessels used by royalty, and "benches of ivory" certainly indicate a vessel equipped with royal luxury.
One of the most ancient pleasure-craft, and the most beautiful and renowned of which any definite description has been preserved, was the royal barge, or galley, of Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt, thirty years before the Christian era, which is thus described by Shakespeare:
"The barge she sat in, like a burnished throne
Burned on the water; the poop was beaten gold.
Purple the sails and so perfumed, that
The winds were lovesick with them; the oars were silver,
Which to the tune of flutes kept stroke
And made the water which they beat to flow faster,
As amorous of their strokes."
To rely upon this description by the poet might be unwise, were it not sustained by the historian;
