TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION F. 861 



11. The Future Policy of Forest Management in the United States. 



By F. B. Hough. 



TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 2. 



The following Papers were read : — 



1. Internal Communication by Land and Water. 

 By Cornelius Walford, F.S.S. 



The paper set forth that, from the earliest dawn of commerce, the sea had been 

 the great highway of nations, while rivers had constituted the means of internal 

 communication. Steam had during the present century alike facilitated maritime 

 locomotion on the ocean and on rivers. 



All countries were not equally circumstanced with respect to rivers. Economy 

 of water-carriage would always commend its use as to certain classes of goods. 

 England had spent very large sums during the last and early part of the present 

 century in perfecting her means of internal water communication, in improving 

 the navigation of rivers and constructing canals ; and her manufacturing industries 

 had greatly benefited thereby. Amongst the nations of the earth who owed most 

 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 instance. She had indeed on her 

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

 latter. In the Euphrates valley was located Babylon and Bagdad, famous in 

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

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

 played a great part in the history of commerce. 



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

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

 the 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 Cairo ' caravans traded with Persia, India, 

 and China, 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 Eastern and the Western Oceans. Hence, in 

 B.C. 1600, Sisostrus (better known as Barneses 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 Gania, the Portuguese navigator, in 1497. Even 

 imperial Rome had to obtain her silks and Oriental luxuries from the Egyptian 

 caravans, trading through Persia to India and China. 



Next in order of history came the road-makers and bridge-builders — the 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 Russia, 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 ; but 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 

 for military purposes, but greatly in view of transporting food-supplies, and so of 



