CHAPTER XIII 



RIVERS AND RIVER TRANSPORT 



IN the earliest days of our history, and for many generations 

 later, navigable rivers exercised a most important, if not a 

 paramount, influence on the settlement of tribes, the location 

 of towns, the development of trade and the social life of the 

 people. They were natural highways, open to all who pos- 

 sessed the means of using them, at a time when men had 

 otherwise still to make roads for themselves ; and in a land 

 covered to so great an extent with forest and fen such natural 

 highways were of exceptional value. They offered a ready 

 means of reaching points in the interior of the country which 

 would otherwise have been more or less inaccessible. They 

 allowed of the transport, in craft however primitive, of 

 commodities too heavy or too bulky for conveyance by pack- 

 horse along the narrow paths trodden out on the hill-sides, 

 winding through woods, or picked out across bog, plain, or 

 morass. 



Rivers further helped to develop that civilisation which 

 is directly encouraged by facility of communication between 

 groups of people who would otherwise assuredly remain back- 

 ward in social progress. It will even be found that down to 

 the turnpike, if not, indeed, to the railway, era in this country, 

 communities dwelling on the banks of navigable rivers, and 

 thus possessing a ready means of communication at all times 

 with others having a like advantage, attained to a higher 

 degree of culture, refinement and social standing than people in 

 localities where, remote from any river or passable highway, 

 they were shut off by bad roads from all intercourse with their 

 fellow-men for, at least, the whole of the winter months. 



In C. H. Pearson's " Historical Maps of England During the 

 first Thirteen Centuries " there is abundant evidence of the 

 way in which towns and trading centres in Britain grew up 



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