TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION F. 



861 



11. The Fxiture FoUctj of Forest Management in the United States. 



Bij F. B. HorGH. 



TUKSDA i; SKPTEMlilCn 2. 



The foUow'intj Papers were read ; — 



1. Internal Gommunicatinn by Land and Water. 

 By CoENELiUH Wat.vord, F.S.S. 



The paper set forth that, from the earliest dawti of comiuerce, the .'ea had been 

 tlie great hifrhway of nations, while rivers had constituted the means of internal 

 commuuicatiou. Steam had during' the present century alike facilitated maritime 

 locomiition on the ocean and on rivers. 



All countries were not equally circumstanfod with respect lo rivers. Economy 

 of water-carriage would always commend its use as to certain cla.sses of g-oods, 

 England had spent very lari^e sums durinjr the last and early part of the > ent 

 century in perfectini,' her means of internal Avater communication, in in ' 



the navigation of rivers and constructing canals ; and lier manufacturing ii. 

 had greatly benefited tlierehy. Amongst the nations of the earth who owca mu.-t 

 to their rivers were China, India, and Egypt ; amongst the European nations, 

 Russia and France. 



But some of the nations of the world, having no facilities of water-carriage, 

 had become great in commerce. Persia was an in-tance. She had indeed on her 

 two extremes the Indus and the Euphrates, with the Tigris as an aflluent of the 

 latter. In the luiphrates valley was located I.?al)ylou and Bagdad, famous in 

 the annals of commerce. But in the interior had been many flourishing cities. 

 How had they become so ? By the agency of mercantile caravans. These had 

 played a great part in the history of connnerce. 



Egypt, as we know from Scripture history and other sources, occupied at a 

 very curly period a front rank in commerce and civilisation. She was the centre of 

 tlie early trading nations, as geographically she was, in a certain sense, the centre 

 of the earth. The seas of the world met at her shores; and by land caravans 

 travelled to all the more important parts of Europe, Asia, and Africa. Cairo 

 thousands of years ago was the centre of the caravan routes, as she is to-day in a 

 more limited degree. From * Grand ( 'aire ' caravans traded with Persia, India, 

 and Chii\a, with the important cities of northern Africa, with Palestine, Asia 

 Minor, Turkey, and Russia, as far as the Baltic. It was not known in the then 

 state of geographical knowledge that navigation (by way of the Cape of Good 

 Hope) was possible between the Jvistern and the Western Oceans. Hence, in 

 B,c, 1600, Sisostrus (better kno%vn as liameses III., builder of the Pyramids) 

 caused the first Suez Canal to be cut — 3,470 years before the opening of the 

 present canal. Egypt thus commanded the known water-ways of the world. 

 She monopolised the trade of India for thousands of years, until the discovery 

 of the Cape route by Vasca da Gama, the Portuguese navigator, in 14!)7. V,\en 

 imperial llome had to obtain her silks and Oriental luxuries from the lOgyptian 

 caravans, trading through Persia to India and China. 



Next in order of history came the road-makors and bridge-builders — tlie ancient 

 Romans. They constructed roads and bridges for the purposes of conquest, as 

 Napoleon I. made fine roads over the Alps for like purposes in modern times. 

 The conditions of transport in Ilussia, in India, and the United States, were next 

 reviewed in some detail. Everywhere railways were more or less rapidly usurping 

 the functions of internal communication. In Russia, indeed, railways had been 

 and were being constructed, largely from military motives; ))Ut they were, none 

 the less, facilitating commerce. In India the rivers were being devoted to 

 irrigation, main trunk lines of railway had become an admitted necessity, partly 

 formilitarv purposes, \i\\\ greatly in view of transpc rHug food-supplies, and so of 



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