6 History of Inland Transport 



It was under conditions such as these that Britain obtained 

 her first roads ; and it was, also, conditions such as these that 

 were to affect more or less the future history of inland com- 

 munication in England, adding largely to the practical diffi- 

 culties experienced in making provision for adequate transport 

 facilities. 



Inasmuch as a great number of chariots were used by the 

 Britons in their attempt to resist the invasion of Caesar, 

 it may be assumed that there were even then in this country 

 roads sufficiently broad and solid on which such chariots could 

 run ; and though evidence both of the use of wattles in the 

 making of roads over clayey soil and of a knowledge on the 

 part of the early Britons of the art of paving has been found, 

 the British chariot-roads were so inefficiently constructed that 

 few traces of them have remained. 



The earliest British roads were, however, probably of the 

 nature of tracks rather than of durable highways ; and they 

 may have beendesigned less for the purposes of defence against 

 invasion than in the interests of that British trade which, even 

 then, was an established institution in the land. 



Writing in " Archaeologia," vol. xlviii (1885), Mr Alfred 

 Tylor expresses the view that the civilisation of the Britons 

 was of a much higher character in some respects than has till 

 recently been supposed. From the fact that Pytheas of Mar- 

 seilles, a Greek traveller who lived B.C. 330, and visited 

 Britain, described the British-made chariots, he thinks we 

 may assume that the Britons had discovered the art of smelting 

 and working tin, lead and iron, and that they used these 

 materials in the making both of chariots and of weapons. 

 But they produced for export, as well as for domestic use. 

 Tin, more especialty, was an absolute necessity in Europe in 

 the bronze age for use in the making of weapons both for the 

 chase and for war, and the metallurgical wealth of Britain 

 afforded great opportunities for trading, just as it subsequently 

 gave the country the special importance it possessed in the 

 eyes of the Roman conquerors. 



To the pursuit of such trading the Britons, according to Mr 

 Tylor, were the more inspired by a desire to obtain, in return 

 for their metals the amber which, as the favourite ornament of 

 prehistoric times, then constituted a most important article 

 of commerce, but was obtainable only in the north of Europe. 



