PRACTICAL PAPERS—COUNTRY ROADS. 
281 
can be obtained; hence it must be used as road material in its 
natural state. The general principles involved in the con¬ 
struction of gravel, loam, and other roads, and described under 
those heads, are to be observed in constructing a road exclu¬ 
sively of clay; the gutters, however, should be made as deep 
as is practicable, and the road-bed as narrow as the travel will 
admit, and be as highly crowned as is admissible, thus guard¬ 
ing against absorption of water from the gutters, and effectu¬ 
ally shedding the rain-fall from the bed. There is no material 
in the catalogue treated that forms so perfect and delightful a 
road for pleasure-driving as clay, when in a certain condition ; 
but it is so difficult to be maintained in the desired state that 
it is judicious to incorporate sand or gravel with it, wherever 
practicable. 
There are districts of country many miles in extent, where 
nothing but drifting sand can be obtained for making roads. 
Where the depth of sand is great before reaching a tenacious 
sub-soil, a road-bed of sand will be more compact and better, 
if made lower than the surface of the land on either margin, 
so that water may flow on to, instead of being drained off from, 
the road. Like clay, pure sand is not a desirable road mate¬ 
rial, and quicksands, not unfrequently found in extensive 
sandy regions, are dangerous. Where drainage of quicksands 
is impracticable, two thicknesses of plank laid over the place 
to be crossed, the lower planks running in the direction of the 
road, and the upper ones crossing it, have been found to 
answer very well as a sort of a floating-road. A contractor on 
the Knox and Lincoln railroad in Maine has recently encoun¬ 
tered a quicksand into which he has sunk pile upon pile to the 
depth of one hundred and forty feet, and no indications of ,a 
hard substratum are yet apparent. 
PLANKROADS. 
Plankroads have been so universally unsatisfactory that 
valuable space need not be occupied with directions for their 
construction. 
