There are some other cities also lords, as it were, of much merchandise and traffic, by means of their commodious situation to many nations, to whom they serve of warehouse room and storehouses: such are Malacca and Ormuz in the East, Alexandria, Constantinople, Messina and Genoa in the Mediterranean Sea, Antwerp, Amsterdam, Danzig and Narva in the Northern Seas, and Frankfurt and Nuremberg in Germany. In which cities many great merchants exercise their traffic and make their warehouses, unto the which the nations thereunto adjoining use to resort to make their provisions of such things as they need because they have commodious means for transportation of it. And this consisteth in the largeness and the safeness of the ports, in the opportunity and fitness of the gulfs and creeks of the seas, in the navigable rivers that come into the cities, or run by or near them, in the lakes and chattels; as also where the ways be plain and safe.
And here to the purpose, because I speak of ways, I cannot pass over those two ways which the kings of Cuzco (called in their language Incas) in the long process of time cut out throughout their dominion, about two thousand miles in length, so pleasant, so commodious, so plain and so level as they give no place to the magnificent works of the Romans. For there shall you see steep and high hills laid even with the plain, and deep valleys filled up, and horrible huge stones cut in pieces; there shall you see the trees that are planted here and there, in excellent good order even by a line, yield both with their shade a comfort and with the charm of the birds that there abound in great plenty, a marvellous delight and pleasure to the travellers that pass those ways. Neither are there wanting on those ways many good inns for lodging and for entertainment, plentiful of all necessary things, nor palaces and goodly buildings that in eminent and open places, as it were, to meet you, present you with a pleasant and beautiful show of their excellency and rareness; nor pleasant towns, nor sweet countries, nor a thousand other delights and pleasures to feed both the eye with variety and the mind with admiration at the infinite effects, partly wrought by nature and partly by the handiwork of man. But to return to our purpose.
It is a good matter and a great help to a prince to know the natural site of his country, and with judgment to have an understanding how to amend it by art and industry. As, for example, to defend his ports with rampiers and with bulwarks, to make the lading and unlading of merchandise both quick and easy, to scour the seas of pirates and of rovers, to make the rivers navigable, to build storehouses apt and large enough to contain great quantity of wares, and to defend and maintain the ways as well on the plains as on the mountains and hilly places.
In this point the kings of China have deserved all praise that may be. For they have with an incredible expense and charge paved with stone all the highways of that most famous kingdom, and have made stone bridges over mighty great rivers, and cut in sunder hills and mountains of inestimable height and craggedness.
They have also strewed the plains and bottoms with very fair stone, so that a man may there pass either on horse or afoot as well in the winter as in the summer time, and merchandise may be easily carried to and fro there by load, either on carts or on horse, mules or camels.
And in this point, no doubt, some princes in Italy are much to blame, in whose countries in the winter-time horses are bemired in sloughs up to the belly, and carts are stabled and set fast in the tough dirt and mire. So that carriages by cart or horse are thereby very cumbersome, and a journey that might be well dispatched in a day can hardly be performed in three or four. And the ways are as bad in many parts of France, as in the country of Poitiers, Saintonge, Beauce and in Burgundy. But this is no place to censure so famous provinces, and therefore let us proceed.
