The" Road Tracer r 129 



up for roads, but I do not think there is much 

 waste. The coffee is always much finer and more 

 fruitful for some distance below a road, and more- 

 over roads are excellent stays and preservers of the 

 soil, the wash being less destructive the oftener it 

 meets with such interruptions. 



In order to insure an easy and equable gradient, 

 the roads should be carefully traced out by means 

 of a suitable road " tracer. " This is, in the first 

 place, a brass telescopic tube, forming the base of 

 a triangle, suspended by the apex from the side of 

 a pole, so that it shall swing just at the level of the 

 eye ; below the tube runs a steel plate with gra- 

 duated scale and weight, exactly similar to the arm 

 of a platform weighing machine. By shifting this 

 weight along the scale, the tube to which it is 

 attached is of course swung at the incline or gradient 

 required. At the end of the tube next the eye is a 

 small perforation no larger than a pin's head, at the 

 other a larger square opening, across the centre of 

 which, horizontally, a thin wire is stretched. The 

 pole being held upright, and the weight adjusted so 

 as to give the required gradient, a coolie is sent on 

 some ten or fifteen yards in the proper direction, 

 bearing a second upright pole, with a cross-piece 

 attached at exactly the same height as the tube on 

 the first one. This second pole must now be held 

 upright on the ground in such a situation that the 



K 



