437 
now, and the remains exhibit a melhod of build- 
ing which for thoroughness has never since been , 
equalled. The location of these roads was not skil- j 
fully made, tor they usually went in straight lines 
from one landmark to another, regardless of the 
hills or valleyB iotervenicg. This method of 
location very frequently involved grades unneces- 
sarily steep, but those old road-builders did under- 
stand thoroughly the two great principles without 
which no good road can be made— drainage and 
solidity. The administrative method was al'^o a 
direct one from a central power, and therefore there 
was system in planning and building and main- 
tenance. And it may bo remarked that there are 
no good systems of roads in any part of the world 
at this time where this work is left to the various 
local authorities. 
The movement for better roads in England b?gan 
in 1770. Up to that time, from the days of the 
caravans, when merchandise was carried from place 
to place on the backs of beasts of burden, the 
roads in England had always been bad, but their 
condition did not entail widespread suffering until 
the population became dense and there was an 
actual necessity for an interchange of products 
and commodities from neighbourhood to neighbour- 
hood. Maoaulay tells us that previous to the era 
of improved roads in England " the fruits of the 
earth were sometimes suffered to rot in one place, 
while a few miles distant the supply fell short of 
the demand." And further on he points out the 
reason. " One chief cause of the badness of the 
roads was the defective state of the law. Every 
parish was bound to repair the roads which passed 
through it, and thus a sparse and impoverished 
rural population was often compelled to maintain 
highways between rich and populous towns." 
England met this difficulty by the establishment 
of a comprehensive system of turnpikes, and before 
the beginning of this century thirty thousand miles 
of these had been built. There are no traces of 
Boman roads in England, therefore these turnpikes 
were not fashioned after that .model. Instead, 
they wore built very much in the same way as that 
which generally prevails in this country. A line 
was located, or the old highwayiline adopted, and 
stone piled on the surface and left for the wheels 
of passing waggons to pack into a solid mass. 
Litilo or no attention was paid to drainage, and 
therefore the new turnpikes were not a great im. 
provemont on the old roads. It was not until 
the time of those two great road-builders, Telford 
and Macadam, that anything like good common 
roads were built in Great Britain. And with the 
era of better roads, the names of these two men 
will always be associated iu those parts of the 
world affected by English influence. They have 
shown us how to build roads at a very much less 
cost than the old Roman way, and they answer 
modern purposes quite as well. 
The name of Telford is associattd with a pitched 
foundation which is always desirable for a road 
subject to very heavy traOio. It consists of liat 
stones o.iretuUy set em edge in course across the 
road, with the broadcbt edge downward. The upper 
edges should not exceed four inches in breadth, 
to hold the broken stone well. All irregularities 
must be knocked off and small stones and chips 
must be lirmly pinned into the interstices with 
a hummer, so as to form a regular convex surface, 
with every stone- firmly fixed in place. The thick- 
ness of the pitching is generally six or seven 
inches ; it should r.ot be less than four, and it 
may generally bo thicker without any sensible 
iiicioaas of oo«t. At lemst tour inches ot broken 
stone are required over the pitched foundation, 
and when cousolidatnd sis inches are always suffi- 
cient. But before laying this pitched foundation 
Telford insisted that the road-way should be 
thoroughly drained, eo that there would nev. r be 
any considerable dampness below the metal pave- 
men. Macadam, the other great scientific road- 
builder, differed from Telford as to the necessity 
for such heavy foundations. He maintained that 
the dry subsoil, however bad, would carry any 
weight that could be: placed upon it if it were made 
dry by drainage and kept dry by an impervious 
covering of stone well bonded together. Ttie Mac- 
adam pavement, therefore, as originally designed, 
consisted only in perfectly draining the subsoil of 
a roadway, covering it with broken stone to a 
thickness of from six to twelve inches, and rolling 
this until it had become packed and bonded together. 
Where the traffic is very heavy the Telford pavement 
is unquestionably the better of the two ; but the 
Macadam pavement would most admirably answer 
the purpose for nine out of every ten miles of 
roadway in America. In this country we are in the 
habit of speaking of any road as macadamised which 
has a simple covering of broken stone. It is rarely, 
however, that the subsoil of such roads has been 
drained at aU. Without the drainage the stone 
might as well be spared, as the dirt road would be 
quite as good. After the advent of these great road- 
builders in England— they flourished in the first 
half of thi.s century — there was a sensible and 
marked improvement of the highways in both Eng- 
land and Scotland, until now the roads which were 
once almost impassable, and were a serious burden to 
the people owing to the great cost of transportation, 
have been made hard and smooth, and a horse 
can draw for a given distance a load three times 
as heavy as on the roads of the olden time. In 
addition to this, what was once a serious under- 
taking—that is, a journey by coach from one part 
of England to another — is now a pleasure much 
indulged in by tourists and other travellers who 
care for a closer intimacy with the country than 
can bo had from the windows of a flying train. 
Even in the Highlands o£ Scotland the roads are 
EO well built and maintained that one can drive 
all through that mountainous region without iinding 
a mile of road as rough as our ordinary city streets. 
But France has a system of roads far superior 
to that of Great Britain. The great Napoleon 
appears to have been the first modern statesman 
and soldier in Europe who appreciated from a 
military and economic standpoint the vast impor- 
tance of good highways and at the same time had 
the power to carry out whatever plans he wished. 
He organised and started the method of road 
building and maintenance which has ever since 
been observed in Prance, which now has the best 
roads ot any country in the world, and — what is 
quite as much to the point— at a less cost than 
that which is paid elsewhere for highways much 
inferior. They have a special department of the 
Government, of which the Minister of Public 
Works is President, devoted to roads and bridges. 
This department maintains a college for the educa- 
tion of the engineers who are to be employed 
by it. There is always a staff of about sis hundred 
engineers and inspectors on duty. The roada of the 
Eepublic are divided into several classes- national, 
departmental, military, and vicinal. The national 
roads are twenty-five thousand miles iu total length 
and are buill and maintained entirely by the 
national treasury. The vicinal or cross roads are 
built and maintained chiefly by the communes, but 
under a national aelminisiration. On these roads 
there are constantly employed fifty thousand work- 
men and throe thousand overseers. On the national 
roads the work is planned , and insi)ected diructly 
by the officials of the dcpaitment. On the vicinal 
