Of the commodity of conduct
This commodity is lent unto us partly of the land and partly of the water.
Of the land, if it be plain. For by that means it conduceth easily the merchandise and goods of all sorts and kinds, upon carts, horses, mules and other beasts of burden; and men make their journeys the more commodiously on foot, on horse, in chariot, and in other suchlike sort and matter.
The Portuguese do write that in some large and spacious plains of China they use coaches with sails, which some essayed not many years since in Spain.
Of the water, this commodity is lent us if it be navigable;and without comparison the commodity is much better and more worth far, which the water do afford us than which the earth doth give us, both for ease and speediness, forasmuch as in less time, and with less charge and labour (without proportion in it)greater carriages are brought from countries most remote by water than by land.
Now your navigable water is either of the sea or of the river or of the lake, which are natural helps and means, or of channels or of pools as that of Moeris in Egypt, which was 450 miles about, made by art and by man's industry and labour.
It seems in very truth that God created the water, not only for a necessary element to the perfection of nature, but more than so, for a most ready means to conduct and bring goods from one country to another. For His Divine Majesty, willing that men should mutually embrace each other as members of one body, divided in such sort His blessings as to no nation did he give all things, to the end that others having need of us, and contrariwise we having need of others, there might grow a community, and from a community love and from love an unity between us.
And to work this community the easier He produced the water, which of nature is such a substance that through the grossness thereof it is apt to bear great burdens, and through the liquidness, helped with the winds or the oars, fit to carry them to what place they list. So that by such a good mean the West is joined with the East, and the South with the North. And a man might say that whatso grows in one place grows in all places, by the easy means provided to come by them.
Now without doubt the sea, for her infinite greatness and grossness of the water, is much more profitable than the lakes or the rivers; but the sea serves you to little purpose if you have not a large and safe port to ride into. I say large either for the greatness or for the depth of the entry thereat, the middest and the extremes, and I say safe either from all or from many winds, or at least from the most blustering and most tempestuous.
It is held that among all winds the Northern is most tolerable, and that the seas that are troubled on the Greekish coast cease their rage and wax quiet as soon as the wind is laid.
But the Southern winds trouble them and beat them so sore (whereof the Gulf of Venice is an undoubted witness) that even after the wind is laid they swell and rage a great while after.
Now the port shall be safe either by nature, as that of Messina and Marseilles, or else by art, the imitator of nature, as that of Genoa and of Palermo.
Lakes are, as it were, little seas, so that also they for the proportion of the place, and other respects besides, give a great help to appopulate towns and cities; as it is found in Nova Hispania, whereas is the Lake of Mexico which extendeth nine hundred miles in compass, and containeth fifty fair and goodly towns in it, amongst the which there is the town Tenochtitlan, the Metropolitan seat of that great and large kingdom.
The rivers also import much, and most of all they that run the longest course, especially through the richest and most merchantable regions, such as is Po in Italy, Scheldt in Flanders, Loire and Seine in France, Danube and the Rhine in Germany. And as lakes are certain several remembrances of the bosoms of the gulfs of the seas, formed and made by nature, even so chattels wherein to the water of the lake or the river runneth are certain imitations and, as it were, shadows of the same rivers made by skill and cunning.
The ancient kings of Egypt made a ditch that from the Nile ran to the city Heroopolis, and they essayed to draw a channel from the Red Sea to the Mediterranean, to knit up our seas with the Indian Seas, and so to make the easier transportation to and fro of all kinds of merchandise, and by that means withal to enrich their own kingdom. And it is a thing well known how oft it hath been attempted to break up the Isthmus to unite the Ionian with the Aegean Sea. A Sultan of Cairo drew a chattel from the Euphrates to the city of Aleppo. In Flanders you may see both at Ghent and at Bruges, and in other places else besides, many channels made by art, and with an inestimable expense and charge, but yet of much more profit for the ease they bring to merchandising and to the traffic of other nations. And in Lombardy many cities have wisely procured this ease unto them, but none more than Milan, that with one chattel (worthy of the Romans' glory) draweth the waters to it of the Ticino and of the lake called Lago Maggiore, and by such means enricheth itself with infinite store of merchandises; and with another chattel benefiteth much by the river Adda through the opportunity and means it hath thereby to bring in the fruits and the goods of their exceeding plentiful country home unto their houses. And they should make it much the better if they would cleanse and scour the chattel of Pavia and Ivrea.
Now in chattels and in rivers, for their better ease of conduct and of traffic, besides the length of their courses we have before spoken, the depth, the pleasantness, the thickness of the water and the largeness thereof is of much moment to them.
