[s, B. DAWSON] THE LINES OF DEMARCATION S07 



cidmiralty knot; and, as before stated, the precise circumference of the 

 earth has not even yet been ascertained with absolute accuracy. 



Although the G-reek itinerary standard was the stadium, or foot- 

 race course at Olympia, it was repeated in the st'adia of all other Greek 

 cities in Europe or Asia Minor, erected for the athletic games, of which 

 the Greeks were so fond ; and, in fact, wherever Greek influence ex- 

 tended the stade continued to be the established standard. 



The Roman standard itinerary measure was characteristic of the 

 world-conquerors. The mile is the milk passuum — the thousand paces^ — 

 of the legionary soldiers, and, as they subdued Western Europe, the 

 Roman power was consolidated by a perfect system of roads, and their 

 milestones recorded the distances and familiarized the people for many 

 centuries with a general standard of length which overrode the local 

 measures of the shifting and semi-barbarous tribes of the West. The 

 integer of this standard is the passus — the pace ; not the gradus. or 

 step — a distinction sometimes overlooked ; because, as the word passed 

 througli the French into the English language it became synonymous 

 with step : whereas the Roman passus was a double step equal to five 

 Roman feet. In the British army the step is two and a half feet and 

 the passus is five feet : but the Roman soldier had a slightly shorter 

 step 'and his thousand paces were equivalent to only 4,85-i English feet. 

 1 am not forgetting that, along the Rhine, there existed in the army, 

 in the later years of the Empire, a longer foot — the Drusian foot — equal 

 to 13-1 English inches ; but the standard in law and the measure along 

 the roads was the Roman mile, related to the Roman foot of 11-65 Eng- 

 lish inches. The following is a short table of these standards : 



1 Roman mile = 1000 pas«us = 4854 English feet. 



1 Old English mile = 1000 paces = 5000 

 1 modern statute mile = 5280 " " 



75 Roman miles (75 '09) = 1 degree. 



It is instructive to observe that even the old English mile is based 

 upon the idea of a thousand paces. ''Our ancestors," as Professor De 

 Morgan remarked, "if they had not the old Roman mile, thought they 

 " had it." The difference was only 146 feet ; for the Roman foot being 

 11-65 English inches, 63 Roman are equivalent to 61 English feet. 

 Capt. John Davis, of Arctic fame, one of the most skilful sailors of 

 Queen Elizabeth's reign gives in his Seaman's Secrets (a treatise on 

 navigation pubUshed in 1.505) the following table: — 10 inches = 1 

 foot ; 5 feet = 1 pace; 1000 paces = 1 mile; 3 miles = 1 league; 

 20 leagues = 1 degree. The editor of Davis's Works in the Hakluyt 

 Series adds a note to say that this must be misprint as a mile is 5,280 

 feet ; but it is no misprint but an accurate statement of measures then 

 in common use. 



