TOWARDS TIIK KM) OF LAST CENTUBX '^>7 



arising from the extremely imperfect manner in which 

 they were made. 



Road-making as a profession was as yet unknown. 

 Deviations were made in the old roads to make them 

 11 ion 1 easy and straight; but the deep ruts were merely 

 filled up with any materials that lay nearest at hand, 

 a i id st < >i les taken from the quarry, instead of being broken 

 and laid on carefully to a proper depth, were tumbled 

 down and roughly spread, the country road-maker trust- 

 ing to the operation of cart-wheels and waggons to crush 

 them into a proper shape. Men of eminence as engi- 

 neers and there were very few such at the time con- 

 sidered road-making beneath their consideration; and 

 it was even thought singular that, in 1768, the dis- 

 tinguished Smeaton should have condescended to make 

 a road across the valley of the Trent, between Markham 

 and Newark. 



The making of the new roads was thus left to such 

 persons as might choose to take up. the trade, special 

 skill not being thought at all necessary on the part of a 

 road-maker. It is only in this way that we can account 

 for the remarkable fact, that the first extensive maker of 

 roads who pursued it as a business, was not an engineer, 

 not even a mechanic, but a Blind Man, bred to no trade, 

 and possessing no experience whatever in the arts of 

 surveying or bridge-building, yet a man possessed of 

 extraordinary natural gifts, and unquestionably most 

 successful as a road-maker. We allude to John Metcalf, 

 commonly known as " Blind Jack of Knaresborough," to 

 whose biography, as the constructor of nearly two hun- 

 dred miles of capital roads as, indeed, the first great 

 Knglish road-maker we propose to devote our next 

 chapter. 



