CHAPTER XXIV. 



ON THE COST OF CARRIAGE. 



IN my first volume I took occasion to comment on the cost 

 of carriage over known distances, and by such highways as 

 those kept in repair under the obligation of the trinoda neces- 

 sitas. Many of these, at least, had been in existence from the 

 days of the Roman occupation, perhaps earlier still, and are 

 depicted on a fourteenth century map on parchment, still pre- 

 served in Bodley's library. I have little doubt that some of 

 the principal English roads date from the times in which 

 primitive races settled in this country, if they were not the 

 tracks of wild animals before man adopted and used them. 

 So, in the far west of the United States, the buffalo track, 

 well worn by the regular migration of the animal, becomes an 

 Indian trail, a mountain or country road, and is constantly 

 adopted, at last, as the line on which a railroad should be 

 constructed. The instinct of the animal and the shrewdness 

 of the savage, only a little higher in intelligence than the 

 animal, have planned roughly the survey which engineering 

 skill examines and frequently approves. 



In commenting on the facts which I had collected for my 

 earlier volumes, I was able to point out that persons were in 

 error who imagined that the cost of carriage in medieval 

 England must have been relatively high, because, as was 

 assumed, the roads were bad. It was clear, from the evidence 

 of prices, that the cost of carriage was low, and that the roads 

 were therefore, prima facie, good. Besides, estates were very 

 scattered, especially those held by corporations. Fitzherbert's 

 description of his manor of Dale bears testimony to the fact 



