While the prosperity of a country depends largely upon its productiveness, the importance of proper facilities for the expeditious transportation and ready exchange of its various products can scarcely be overrated. The free circulation of commercial commodities is as essential to the welfare of a people as is the unimpaired circulation of the blood to the human organism. The interest taken by man in the improvement of the roads over which he must travel is one of the chief indications of civilization, and it might even be said that the condition of the roads of a country shows the degree of enlightenment which its people have reached. The trackless though very fertile regions of Central Africa have for thousands of years remained the seat of savages; but no nation that established a system of public thoroughfares through its dominion ever failed to make a distinguished figure in the theater of the world. There are some authors who go even so far as to call the high roads of commerce the pioneers of enlightenment and political eminence. It is true that as roads and canals developed the commerce of Eastern Asia and Europe, the attention of their people was turned to those objects which distinguish cultured nations and lead to political consequence among the powers of the world. The systems of roads and canals which we find among those ancients who achieved an advanced state of civilization might well put to shame the roads which disgraced not a few of the European states as late as the eighteenth century. Among the early nations of Asia of whose internal affairs we have any historic knowledge are the Hindoos, the Assyrians and Babylonians, the Phoenicians, the Persians and the Chinese. The wealth of India was proverbial long before the Christian era. She supplied Nineveh and Babylon, and later Greece and Rome, with steel, zinc, pearls, precious stones, cotton, silk, sugar-cane, ivory, indigo, pepper, cinnamon, incense and other commodities. If we accept the testimony of the Vedas, the religious books of the ancient Hindoos, a high degree of culture must have prevailed on the shores of the Ganges more than three thousand years ago. Highways were constructed by the state and connected the interior of the realm with the sea and the countries to the northeast and northwest. For this purpose forests were cleared, hills leveled, bridges built and tunnels dug. But the broad statesmanship of the Hindoo did not pause here. To administer to the convenience and comfort of the wayfaring public, and thus still more encourage travel and the exchange of commodities, the state proceeded to line these public roads with shade trees, to set out mile-stones, and to establish stations provided with shady seats of repose, and wells at which humane priests watered the thirsty beasts.