HOW TO MAKE FARM-ROADS. 41 



unsightly holes that pained me to look at, when a resource 

 occurred to me in the various roadways of the farm leading 

 to the different fields. I remove the surface-soil as deep as 

 of value (and for compost a portion of sand or hard-pan 

 does no harm as an absorber of liquids); then dig a suffi- 

 cient depth into the gravel to receive the bowlders, tumble 

 them in, fill up the spaces between with the smaller rocks 

 ■which I take from some of the too many walls, level off w^th 

 the smaller stones, and finish with the gravel thrown out of 

 the roadwa}^. 



I could not afford to blast these bowlders to make a road- 

 way, nor to make a roadway simply to get rid of these bowl- 

 ders ; but the compost material is the happy make-save, while 

 at the same time I get a splendid road, completely under- 

 drained, that knows nothing of the coming or going of frost, 

 but is always as magnificent a road-bed as the famous high- 

 ways of the ancient Romans. If it were merely a question 

 of sinking bowlders, and thils disposing of them, I question 

 whether this would not still be the more economical \V"ay of 

 management : for I have found when single stones are han- 

 dled in this way, that to make sure of getting them at the 

 right depth below the reach of the plough, it is necessary to 

 dig a hole much larger than the bowlder, whereas in the ex- 

 cavated roadway there is far less waste ; while the digging, 

 that is necessarily all spade and pick work in individual 

 holes, here is mostly done b}" the plough. If, in handliug 

 blasted rocks, I find some with good building-faces, these I 

 haul into some waste angle to avail myself of their possi- 

 bilities. This is the best paying way I have yet found for 

 disposing of these obdurate tenants-at-will, whose principal 

 business since the coming of civilization has been to break 

 or wear away plough-points, and strain the patience of indus- 

 try. ,The other day I studied the record of a single stone 

 measuring two feet by two and a half. On its hard green- 

 stone face, located just below the surface of the soil, I count- 

 ed, side by side, as close as they could stand, over forty 

 well-defined grooves made by the points of ploughs, all along 

 down from the ancient Puritan days to the present year of 

 possession. With feelings somewhat allied to indignation, 

 I pitched that stone into the bottom of my roadway trench, 

 and so closed the record. 



6 



