12 Inaugural Lecture 1889 



and just as the country towns and districts of the New England 

 States of North America remind one of similar districts in Old 

 England, so do the cathedrals and monasteries (generally 

 much dilapidated) of Paraguay and the province of Cordova 

 remind one of the towns of Old Spain. 



But the occupation did not wander far from the water- 

 ways, and, with existing means of communication, it would 

 have required many hundreds of years before by mere increase 

 of population and the consequent necessity to extend the 

 area of occupation the interiors of the great continents would 

 have been opened up. 



Transportation and Civilisation. Up to the commencement 

 of the present century the means of transport and communication 

 were essentially the same as had served the world for thousands 

 of years. Between distant countries the only means of com- 

 munication was by sea in ships which depended entirely for 

 locomotion on the strength and direction of the winds. For 

 communication and distribution of traffic on land dependence 

 was placed on the beast of burden, the waggon and the barge. 



With the introduction of steam everything was changed. 

 It was then that the great rivers of the continents asserted 

 their value and a town on a navigable river, however far inland, 

 suddenly acquired all the advantages of the oldest established 

 seaport. The bed of the river became for commercial purposes 

 a useful indentation or extension of the coast line. Indeed 

 the introduction of steam navigation in rivers virtually carried 

 the sea inland as far as their waters were navigable; and 

 as both banks of the river were available for distribution 

 of traffic to the landward districts, the actual effect, expressed 

 numerically, was to increase the existing coast line by double the 

 length of the navigable portion of the rivers. This sudden extension 

 or multiplication of length of the effective coast line created an 

 enormous demand for the means of locomotion so as to utilise 

 the advantages conferred, and the consequence was that the 

 steamship builder devoted himself at first almost exclusively to 

 the construction of steamers for rivers and inland waters. 



It is just a hundred years since the first experiments in 

 steam propulsion were being made simultaneously in America 



