So, in that dim day, man took upon himself the task of increasing his dominion over space and time, and right nobly has he acquitted himself.  Because of it he became a road builder and a bridge builder; likewise, he wove clumsy sails of rush and matting.  At a very remote period he must also have recognized that force moves along the line of least resistance, and in virtue thereof, placed upon his craft rude keels which enabled him to beat to windward in a seaway.  As he excelled in these humble arts, just so did he add to his power over his less progressive fellows and lay the foundations for the first glimmering civilizations—­crude they were beyond conception, sporadic and ephemeral, but each formed a necessary part of the groundwork upon which was to rise the mighty civilization of our latter-day world.

Divorced from the general history of man’s upward climb, it would seem incredible that so long a time should elapse between the moment of his first improvements over nature in the matter of locomotion and that of the radical changes he was ultimately to compass.  The principles which were his before history was, were his, neither more nor less, even to the present century.  He utilized improved applications, but the principles of themselves were ever the same, whether in the war chariots of Achilles and Pharaoh or the mail-coach and diligence of the European traveller, the cavalry of the Huns or of Prince Rupert, the triremes and galleys of Greece and Rome or the East India-men and clipper ships of the last century.  But when the moment came to alter the methods of travel, the change was so sweeping that it may be safely classed as a revolution.  Though the discovery of steam attaches to the honour of the last century, the potency of the new power was not felt till the beginning of this.  By 1800 small steamers were being used for coasting purposes in England; 1830 witnessed the opening of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway; while it was not until 1838 that the Atlantic was first crossed by the steamships Great Western and Sirius.  In 1869 the East was made next-door neighbour to the West.  Over almost the same ground where had toiled the caravans of a thousand generations, the Suez Canal was dug.  Clive, during his first trip, was a year and a half en route from England to India; were he alive to-day he could journey to Calcutta in twenty-two days.  After reading De Quincey’s hyperbolical description of the English mail-coach, one cannot down the desire to place that remarkable man on the pilot of the White Mail or of the Twentieth Century.

But this tremendous change in the means of locomotion meant far more than the mere rapid transit of men from place to place.  Until then, though its influence and worth cannot be overestimated, commerce had eked out a precarious and costly existence.  The fortuitous played too large a part in the trade of men.  The mischances by land and sea, the mistakes and delays, were adverse elements of no mean