Page:Remarks on the Present System of Road Making (1823).djvu/129

 again; and I directed the road to be made perfectly clean—I am speaking of a gravel road now—and I directed that additional gravel should be prepared in the pits by screening the dirt very clean from it, breaking all the large pieces and bringing that upon the road in very light coats not exceeding two inches at a time; and when those coats were settled, to bring others of very clean materials upon the road, until it settled into a solid smooth hard surface, and which the coachmen in their mode of expression, say "runs true." The wheel runs hard upon it; it runs upon the nail.

Uninfluenced by the state of the weather?—Perfectly so.

In your experience, have you observed that on gravel roads the materials are generally very unskilfully and improperly applied?—Generally so. I think always I may say, for I think I never saw them skilfully or properly managed.

Have you adopted the mode of washing the gravel?—No; I think that is a more expensive process than is necessary.

Do you think it more expensive than screening?—A great deal more so, and I have another reason for objecting to that, with respect to the gravel near London; the loam adheres so strongly to it that no ordinary washing will clean it. The loam is detached from the gravel by the united effort of the water on the road, and the travelling, by which the roads near London become so excessively dirty; but it would be impossible to detach the loam from the gravel in the pits, by throwing water on it; I have tried the experiment and know the fact.

To what particular practice do you allude, when you inform the Committee that gravel is unskilfully applied to the roads in general?—I see that on gravel roads, the gravel is put on after being very imperfectly sifted, and the huge pieces not being broken, and the gravel is laid on the middle of the road and allowed to find its own may to the sides. Now the principle of road-making I think the most valuable, is to put broken stone upon a road, which shall unite by its own angles, so as to