And the weighty fact is that this immense and complex organism, with all its accumulations of wealth and wisdom, its diversified employments, its agriculture, manufactures, business affairs, financial systems, commercial and political relations, civil and social order—its very life and potency—was not only fitted to but dependent upon means of transportation which, as respects their expense, speed and capacity, had not essentially altered since the earliest tribes began to barter! Enormous growth of enterprise and enlightenment, amazing progress in every other sphere of human effort, with _motive power_, which lies at the foundation of every activity, remaining from first to last a constant quantity! Before the earliest recorded transaction—when Abraham purchased the field of Ephron and paid for it his “400 shekels of silver current with the merchant”—the horse and the ox were the established agencies of land distribution; and what better agencies, bear in mind, became available at any time thereafter until well along in the nineteenth century? Yet the ox was as strong and the horse as fleet, and their powers were as effectively employed, in the days of the Pharaohs as they are at the present time. Indeed, no history is so ancient as not to disclose the general use of animals for the purposes of carriage, while the vehicles to which they were harnessed had then been developed, in point of convenience and usefulness, to a degree not much exceeded in any subsequent period. Though differing considerably in appearance from the wagons with which we are familiar, yet they were constructed upon the same principles and performed the same functions as those now employed. Similar progress was made in ship-building and seamanship as far back as history affords proof or tradition. There were oar and sail, tides and currents, and the inconstant winds, long before the ships of the Phœnicians brought back from the East the gold of Ophir; and what more was there than oar and sail, winds and currents—for all the purposes of navigation—until, almost within the memory of men yet living, the little steamboat of Robert Fulton ascended the Hudson River! In this long span of time, it is true, bridges were built, highways improved, vehicles finer fashioned, sailing craft increased in size, and the mariner’s compass led to longer voyages; but, nevertheless, the forces by which movement is effected, the actual means of distribution on land and sea, continued without substantial change in character or efficiency age after age and century after century until the recent, the very recent, era of steam locomotion.