In the raw materials required for food, for manufactures, and for
domestic purposes, the cost of transport necessarily forms a
considerable item; and it is clear that the more this cost can be
reduced by facilities of communication, the cheaper these articles
become, and the more they are multiplied and enter into the
consumption of the community at large.

Let any one imagine what would be the effect of closing the roads,
railways, and canals of England. The country would be brought to a
dead lock, employment would be restricted in all directions, and a
large proportion of the inhabitants concentrated in the large towns
must at certain seasons inevitably perish of cold and hunger.

In the earlier periods of English history, roads were of comparatively
less consequence. While the population was thin and scattered,
and men lived by hunting and pastoral pursuits, the track across
the down, the heath, and the moor, sufficiently answered their purpose.
Yet even in those districts unencumbered with wood, where the first
settlements were made--as on the downs of Wiltshire, the moors of
Devonshire, and the wolds of Yorkshire--stone tracks were laid down
by the tribes between one village and another. We have given here,
a representation of one of those ancient trackways still existing
in the neighbourhood of Whitby, in Yorkshire;

[Image] Ancient Causeway, near Whitby.

and there are many of the same description to be met with in other
parts of England. In some districts they are called trackways or
ridgeways, being narrow causeways usually following the natural