December r, tSqt.] tHE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. 
437 
now, and the romaing exhibit a method of build- 
ing which for thoroughnegg hae never since been , 
equalled. The location of theee roads was not pkil- : 
fully made, for they usually went in straight lines ' 
from one landmark to another, regardless of the i 
hills or valleys intervening. This method of | 
location very frequently involved grades nnnoces- | 
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 aUo a 
direct one from a central power, and therefore there 
was system in planning and building and main- 
tenanuo. And it may be remarked that there are 
no good systems of roads in any part of the world 
at (his time where this work is left to the various 
local authorities. 
F« The movement for better roads in England b?gan 
in 1770. Up to that time, from the days of the 
caravans, when morohandiso was carried from place 
to place on the backs of beasts of burden, the 
roads in England bad 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. Macaulay tells us that previous to the era 
Of improved roads in England “ the fruits of the 
earth wore sometimes Buffered 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 oompelled to maintain 
highways between rich and populous towns." 
England mot this dithculty by the establishment 
of a comprehensive system of turnpikes, and before 
century thirty thousand miles 
of these had been built. There are no traces of 
Roman roads in England, therefore these turnpikes 
tvere not fashioned after that model. Instead, 
they were built very much in the same way as that 
which generally prevails in this country. A line 
was located, or the old highway line adopted, and 
stone piled on the surface and left for the wheels 
of passing waggons to pack into a solid mass, 
liitiie or no attention waa paid to drainage, and 
therefore the new turnpikes were not a great im. 
provement on the old roads. It waa 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 bettor roads, the names of those two men 
will always bo associated in those parts of the 
world affected by English influence. They have 
shown UB how to build roads at a very much less 
cost than the old Roman way, and they answer 
modern purposes quite ns well. 
The name of Telford is associated with a pitched 
foundation which is always desirable for a road 
subject to very heavy traffic. It consists of flat 
stones carefully set on edge in course across the 
road, with the broadoat 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 hammer, so as to form a regular convex surface, 
with every stone farmly fixed in place. The thick- 
ness of the pitching is generally six or seven 
inches ; it should not he less than four and it 
may generally bo thicker without any ’sensible 
increase of cost. At least tour inches of broken 
stone are required over the pitched foundation, 
and when consolidated six inches are always sufll- 
oient. But before laying this pitched foundation 
Telford insisted that the road-way should be 
thoroughly drained, so that there would never 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. lie maintained that 
the dry subsoil, however bad, would carry any 
weight that could be placed upon it it it were made 
dry by drainage and kept dry by an impervious 
covering of stone well bonded together The Mac 
Bdsin pavement, therefore, as originally designed, 
consisted only in perfectly draining the subsoil of 
a roadway, covering it with broken atone 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 a’l. Without the drainage the stone 
might as well be epared, 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 this century— there was a sensible and 
marked improvement of the highways in both Eng- 
land and Scotland, until now the roads which wore 
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 
eon 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 onoe a serious undor- 
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 of Scotland tho roads are 
to well built and maintained that one can drive 
all through that mountainous region without finding 
® road as rough as our ordinary city streets. 
> h ranee has a syslom 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 tho vast impor- 
tance of good highways and at tho same time had 
the power to carry out whatever plana ho wished 
jae organised and started the method of road 
building and maintenance which has ever sinoa 
been observed in France, which now has he bas? 
roads of any country ,n 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 
^vernmenf, of whioh the Minister of Publio 
Thi=^B t de.votod to roads and bridges. 
This department maintains a oollege for the eduoa- 
tion of the engineers who are to be employed 
by it. There is always a staff of about six hundred 
engineers and inspeotors on duty. The roads of the 
Republio are divided into several olaeses — national 
departmental, military, and vicinal. The national 
roads are twenty-five thousand miles in total length 
and are built and maintained entirely by the 
national treaeury. The vicinal or cross roads are 
built and maintained chiefly by the communes but 
under a national administration. On these ’ l 
there are constantly employed fifty thousand work 
men and three thousand overseers. On , 
roads tho work is planned .and insiieoted 
by the officials of the department. On tho^iSl 
