Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 51.djvu/82

74 and maintained. Little attention has been paid by the rural dweller to the arguments in favor of good roads. His line of reasoning is that roads that were satisfactory to his father and grandfather are good enough for him. In vain has he been told that, with good roads all the year round, the farmer and merchant come into closer communication; that he can sell his stock and grain when prices tempt him, instead of being dependent upon a favorable state of the road; that he can buy his supplies on rainy days, and increase his number of perishable crops, which are of uncertain value with bad roads, but become of certain value when impassable ways cease to cause spasmodic transportation.

To-day State roads are furnishing the farmer the much-needed object lessons—roads which by their general excellence through-out the year are causing, as in some counties in New Jersey, a marked increase in farm values. Other States, as Massachusetts, are building highways with State money, one fourth of which is eventually returned to the State by the county traversed by the way, while the legislative enactments of other States require a portion of the expense to be borne by the county in which the road lies, and by the freeholders whose property immediately abuts the improved roads. The mutual benefit derived from improved highways by all classes of people is now generally recognized in the more thrifty States, and from now on we may expect with surety the gradual development of our highways until the principal thoroughfares of the country come up to the required standard of excellence.

Travelers have described the celebrated Peruvian military road, leading from Cuzco to Quito, that was constructed long before the time the Spaniards conquered that country, about 1544. This road is variously estimated at fifteen hundred to two thousand miles in length, passing over deep cañons and across high mountain ranges. Large sandstone blocks formed the foundation, and this was covered with a native cement of a bituminous nature, forming a very smooth surface possessing great durability. Some portions of the road are still in an excellent state of preservation. The Romans also constructed over ten thousand miles of paved ways; but none of these ancient builders understood the principles made use of to-day.

The art of building the type of road known as the modern highway is not a new one. The second decade of this century in England witnessed the first examples of turnpikes constructed on scientific principles in that country as enunciated by Macadam. Like many discoveries, the first and one of the most important principles involved is one that we should expect would have been discovered and put in general practice long before 1816. At that