"And they blessed Rebekah and said unto her, let thy seed
possess the gates of those which hate them." (Genesis XXIV, 60).
THE TOLL GATE RIOTS OF 1859 JAMAICA'S FIRST toll roads did not
arrive with Highway 2000. They appeared over a century and a
half earlier, around 1838. The history of tolls themselves
stretches back much further, all the way to Greek mythology,
where Charon the ferryman, charged a toll to carry the dead
across the river Acheron. In their writing, Greek scholars
Aristotle and Pliny referred to the use of tolls in Asia and
Arabia. According to the Arthasastra, a Sanskrit political
treatise, tolls were also said to have existed in 4th century
India. Today many countries use tolls as a means of revenue
collection including China, Canada, France, Denmark, Norway,
Switzerland and Austria. A toll road is one whose use is
monitored by the payment of a fee, generally collected by a toll
authority i.e. the government. There are also toll bridges and
toll tunnels. Tolls were generally manned by toll