4 Wisconsin state agricultural society. 
* , * * . \ 
public highways and excavating canals, for the purpose of irriga¬ 
tion, etc. These public works not only enabled the rulers to 
move their armies and munitions of war with greater celerity, and 
to furnish subsistence in more abundance, but the Patricians and 
nobles of the famous city were better enabled to receive their' pro¬ 
visions and luxuries from their rural and plebian neighbors of the 
adjacent country. 
Queen Nitocris of Babylon, protected her kingdom against the 
Medes by turning the Euphrates into a canal with gates and 
sluices and so many windings, that it was a three days’ voyage to 
pass the city of Ardericca 562 years before Christ. Nebuchad¬ 
nezzar built an immense lake and lined the banks of the Eu- 
phrates with brick and bitumen walls, for many miles, to accom. 
plish objects of pleasure, safety and commercial intercourse. 
Rome was once supplied with water from tw T enty acqueducts 
that brought water across the Campagna, from a distance of sixty 
miles. One of these acqueducts passed over 7,000 arches. 
Caesar was not unmindful of the advantages of improved land 
transportation, as well as transit by water, and while in England 
he set on foot a general system of highway improvement. 
Charlemagne was an ardent promoter of public utility, while in 
later days, Napoleon I. set examples in the construction of 
.roads, bridges and canals that all Europe has essayed to imitate. 
Prof. Gfuyot calls the history of navigation “ the Geographical 
History of Man/’ Says a popular writer: “the free and open 
paths of the sea have proved to be the paths of knowledge. If, 
indeed, we glance back into the remote ages, we perceive that the 
most forcible and pregnant illustrations of the condition of man, 
at certain epochs, may be derived from the state of navigation at 
those epochs. * * * In the history of navigation, as else¬ 
where, we are obliged to commence with periods and events that 
are partially fabulous, though founded upon actual occurrences.’’ 
Says Humboldt: “The legend of Prometheus and the unbinding 
the chains of the fire-kindling Titan on the Caucasus, by Her¬ 
cules, in journeying eastward ; the ascent of the Io, from the valley 
of the Hybrites towards the Caucasus, and the myth of the 
Phryxus and Helle, all point to the same path on which Phoeni¬ 
cian navigators had early ventured,” and, remarks another writer 
