een Europe
and Cipangu, and thus prepare men for the voyage of Columbus.

[_Authorities:_ Sir Henry Yule, _Cathay and the Way Thither_, 1865;
_The Book of Ser Marco Polo_, 1875.]

CHAPTER V

ROADS AND COMMERCE

We have now conducted the course of our inquiries through ancient
times and the Middle Ages up to the very eve of the great discoveries
of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and we have roughly indicated
what men had learned about the earth during that long period, and,
how they learned it. But it still remains to consider by what means
they arrived at their knowledge, and why they sought for it. To some
extent we may have answered the latter question when dealing with
the progress of conquest, but men did not conquer merely for the
sake of conquest. We have still to consider the material advantages
attaching to warfare. Again when men go on their wars of discovery,
they have to progress, for the most part, along paths already beaten
for them by the natives of the country they intend to conquer; and
often when they have succeeded in warfare, they have to consolidate
their rule by creating new and more appropriate means of communication.
To put it shortly, we have still to discuss the roads of the ancient
and mediaeval worlds, and the commerce for which those roads were
mainly used.

A road may be, for our purposes, most readily defined as the most
convenient means of communication between two towns; and this logically
implies that the towns existed before the roads were made; and in a
fuller investigation of any particular roads, it will be necessary
to start by investigating why men collect their dwellings at certain
definite spots. In the beginning, assemblies of men were made chiefly
or altogether for defensive purposes, and the earliest towns were
those which, from their natural position, like Athens or Jerusalem,
could be most easily defended. Then, again, religious motives often
had their influence in early times, and towns would grow round temples
or cloisters. But soon considerations of easy accessibility rule in
the choice of settlements, and for that purpose towns on rivers,
especially at fords of rivers, as Westminster, or in well-protected
harbours like Naples, or in the centre of a district, as Nuremberg
or Vienna, would form the most convenient places of meeting for
exchange of goods. Both on a river, or on the sea-shore, the best
means of communication would be by ships or boats; b