was only under obligation to pay the owner half its value in compensation for the damage it had sustained.  In the case of a collision between two vessels, if one was at anchor at the time, the owner of the other vessel had to pay compensation for the boat that was sunk and its cargo, the owner of the latter estimating on oath the value of what had been sunk.  Boats were also employed as ferries, and they must have resembled the primitive form of ferry-boat in use at the present day, which is heavily built of huge timbers, and employed for transporting beasts as well as men across a river.

[Illustration:  297.jpg KAIKS, OR NATIVE BOATS ON THE EUPHRATES AT BIREJIE.]

     Employed for ferrying caravans across the river.

There is evidence that under the Assyrians rafts floated on inflated skins were employed for the transport of heavy goods, and these have survived in the keleks of the present day.  They are specially adapted for the transportation of heavy materials, for they are carried down by the current, and are kept in the course by means of huge sweeps or oars.  Being formed only of logs of wood and skins, they are not costly, for wood is plentiful in the upper reaches of the rivers.  At the end of their journey, after the goods are landed, they are broken up.  The wood is sold at a profit, and the skins, after being deflated, are packed on to donkeys to return by caravan.

[Illustration:  298.jpg THE MODERN BRIDGE OF BOATS ACROSS THE TIGRIS OPPOSITE MOSUL.]

It is not improbable that such rafts were employed on the Tigris and the Euphrates from the earliest periods of Chaldaean history, though boats would have been used on the canals and more sluggish waterways.

In the preceding pages we have given a sketch of the more striking aspects of early Babylonian life, on which light has been thrown by recently discovered documents belonging to the period of the First Dynasty of Babylon.  We have seen that, in the code of laws drawn up by Hammurabi, regulations were framed for settling disputes and fixing responsibilities under almost every condition and circumstance which might arise among the inhabitants of the country at that time; and the question naturally arises as to how far the code of laws was in actual operation.

[Illustration:  299.jpg A SMALL KELEK, OK RAFT, UPON THE TIGRIS AT BAGHDAD.]

It is conceivable that the king may have held admirable convictions, but have been possessed of little power to carry them out and to see that his regulations were enforced.  Luckily, we have not to depend on conjecture for settling the question, for Hammurabi’s own letters which are now preserved in the British Museum afford abundant evidence of the active control which the king exercised over every department of his administration and in every province of his empire.  In the earlier periods of history, when each city lived independently of its neighbours and had its