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XIV. — Roads and Hiyhways ; their History, Construction, Cost, 
Repair, and Management. By VV. H. Wheelek, Member 
of the Institution of Civil Engineers. 
History op Road-making. 
A FACILITY of locomotion is one of the first necessaries of a 
civilised state of society, and the more advanced the condition 
•of any country, the greater is the demand for the means of 
transporting produce and manufactures from one locality to 
another, and for rapid intercourse and intercommunication. 
Railways have, to a certain extent, superseded roads as the 
chief means of transport, but the local utility of a railway must 
depend on the convenience of its lateral feeders. The produce 
of the surrounding district must still be conveyed to the railway 
by means of roads. As the tiny rivulet and the brook gather 
together the water from the surrounding country and conduct it 
to the river, which in time becomes a mighty stream, so must 
the material which is to be carried by the railway first be 
collected and conveyed along the highways of the country before 
it can reach the main trunk. 
Road-making is entirely an attribute of a civilised country. 
It denotes a settled population and an increase of wants. To 
the Arab, and the wild inhabitant of the desert, whose nomad 
life renders such a thing as an accumulation of property a simple 
impossibility, and whose whole worldly substance consists of his 
horse and his tent, a road is a thing unknown and unwanted. 
Consequently, even to this day, the traveller in some Eastern 
countries will seek in vain for a properly formed road, or any of 
those accessories which are considered necessary to locomotion in 
more settled countries. 
From history we learn that road-making on scientific prin- 
ciples was practised by the Carthagenians, from whom the 
Romans learnt the art, and they improved on the method of their 
teachers. The great Roman engineers, having first connected 
their mother-city with all the principal towns in Italy by a 
splendid system of highways, subsequently made it their first 
concern in all their conquests, as a matter of military expediency, 
for the rapid removal of their legions, to lay out a system of 
roads on a plan which was subsequently followed by ourselves in 
the Highlands of Scotland and in South Wales. The Roman 
roads were carried in a direct line from one town to another, 
over hill and valley, and were made in the most permanent and 
substantial manner. The remains of those roads have been 
