ROADS TOO NARROW. 67 



impossible to make a good road over certain soils without 

 suitable drainage to begin with ; an enlightened road-maker 

 would no more think of undertaking to do it than one would 

 think of improving his meadow without putting a drain through 

 it. Our roads were narrow to begin with, like hundreds, per- 

 haps thousands of miles of road in Massachusetts. It has been 

 my privilege to drive over the roads of many towns in Massa- 

 chusetts, with a carriage, where there is but a single track, and 

 you have got to look a long ways ahead to see where you can 

 turn out if you are approaching another team. There are 

 many roads where it is almost impossible to turn out. I found 

 one place in Massachusetts this last summer where I could not 

 drive my broad gauge carriage past another vehicle without 

 running it off on one side up the side of a ledge. I said, that 

 was the first difficulty. Then again, in Newton, roads have 

 been built just as they have everywhere else, very poorly, with- 

 out taking off the soil at all ; but simply by the use of the 

 plough, the scraper, and the shovel, rounding up and turnpiking 

 the road with all the soil underneath, so that when teams are 

 driven over it, they soon wear deep ruts, into which, in the 

 spring and fall of the year, the water will settle and make a 

 horrid road. That is the condition of all the roads that have 

 been made in this shilly-shally way. Then rounding and turn- 

 piking the road to that extent is a great evil. The most perfect 

 road I have ever seen in my life is the Chestnut Hill Reservoir 

 road, in Newton and Brighton. It is eighty feet wide ; I pre- 

 sume there may be six inches rise in that eighty feet. It is a 

 macadamized road. I know it cost a good deal ; I understand 

 that, and I propose to show that it ought to cost a good deal, 

 and that any place which wants such a road as that can well 

 afford to pay for it. I do not expect tliat a little town up 

 among the mountains, whose valuation is not more than half a 

 million of dollars, can afford to build a road costing six or eight 

 thousand dollars a mile. I understand that ; but, if you want 

 to see a perfect road, go and see the Chestnut Hill road. It is 

 perfectly drained, macadamized throughout, the roller has been 

 used faithfully, and the road is just as perfect as it can be. It 

 is as perfect as the finest concrete walk when it is in its best 

 state. Now, what have they got to do to keep that road up ? 

 They have got to do just what our friends on the other side of 



