Page:Craik History of British Commerce Vol 1.djvu/41

Rh A powerful maritime force was maintained by the Romans for the defence of the east, or, as it was called, the Saxon coast; and about the end of the third century we have the first example of an exclusively British navy under the sovereignty of the famous Carausius. The navy of Carausius must have been manned in great part by his own Britons ; and the superiority which it maintained for years in the surrounding seas, preserving for its master his island empire against "the superb fleets that were built and equipped," says a contemporary writer, "simultaneously in all the rivers of the Gauls to overwhelm him," may be taken as an evidence that the people of Britain had by this time been long familiar with ships of all descriptions.

Wholly uncultivated as the greater part of the country was when it was first visited by the Romans, it was most probably not unprovided with a few great highways, by which communication was maintained between one district and another. Cæsar could scarcely have marched his force even so far into the interior as he did, if the districts through which he passed had been altogether without roads. Rude and imperfect enough these British roads may have been, but still they must have been to a certain extent artificial; they must have been cleared of such incumbrances as admitted of being removed, and carried in a continuous line out of the way of marshes and such other natural impediments as could not be otherwise overcome. Tacitus would seem to be speaking of the native roads, when he tells us that Agricola, on preparing in his sixth summer to push into the regions beyond the Forth, determined first to have a survey of the country made by his fleet; because it was apprehended that the roads were infested by the enemy's forces. The old tradition is, that the southern part of the island Avas, in the British times, crossed in various directions by four great highways, still in great part to be traced, and known by the names of the Fosse, Watling-street, Ermine-street, and the Ichenild. The Fosse appears to