When that great people, the Romans, perished off the face of the earth, and none succeeded them, their roads began to decay, their bridges and paved fords were broken down or carried away by floods, and the rulers of the nation were for over five hundred years too busily engaged in subduing rebellions at home or in prosecuting wars abroad to attend to the keeping of communications in proper repair. Social disorder, too, destroyed roads and bridges that had survived natural decay and the stress of the elements. Even those roads which existed in otherwise good condition were only fair-weather highways. They were innocent of culverts, and consequently the storm-water, which nowadays is carried off beneath them, swept across the surface, and either carried it away or remained in vast lakes on whose shores wayfarers shivered until the floods had abated. Thieves and murderers were the commonplaces of the roads, and signposts were not; so that guides—who at the best were expensive, and at the worst were the accomplices of cutthroats, and lured the traveller to their haunts—were absolutely necessary. To the relief of travellers in those times came the Church, for the civil and secular power had not begun even to dream of road-making. The Church did some very important things for travellers, praying for them, and adjuring the devout to include them in their prayers for prisoners and captives, the sick, and others in any way distressed. The very word “travel” derives from _travail_, meaning labour or hardship. This alone shows how much to be pitied were those whose business took them from their own firesides.