At Salerno,
at Amalfi, were cradled those fishing-hamlets which were to nurse
seamen, and not soldiers. Far up the Adriatic, the storm of Northern
invasion had forced a fair-haired and violet-eyed folk into the
fastnesses of the lagoons, to drive their piles and lay their keels
upon the reedy islets of San Giorgio and San Marco; while on the
western side an ancient Celtic colony was rising into prominence, and
rearing at the foot of the Ligurian Alps the palaces of Genoa the
Proud.
Thus upon the Italian stock was begun the language of the seas. Upon
the Italian main the words "tack" and "sheet," "prow" and "poop," were
first heard; and those most important terms by which the law of the
marine highway is given,--"starboard" and "larboard." For if, after the
Italian popular method, we contract the words _questo bordo_ (this
side) and _quello bordo_ (that side) into _sto bordo_ and _lo bordo_,
we have the roots of our modern phrases. And so the term "port," which
in naval usage supersedes "larboard," is the abbreviated _porta lo
timone_, (carry the helm,) which, like the same term in military usage,
"port arms," seems traditionally to suggest the left hand.
But while the Italian races were beginning their brief but brilliant
career, there was in training a nobler and hardier race of seamen, from
whose hands the helm would not so soon be wrested.
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