Page:Remarks on the Present System of Road Making (1823).djvu/135

 break the young ice. That road is partly in the Bristol district. I think there is about seven miles of it, and at the end of those seven miles, we come directly on the limestone rock. I think we have about five or six miles of this rocky road immediately succeeding the morass; and being curious to know what the wear was, I had a very exact account kept, not very lately, but I think the difference is as five to seven in the expenditure of the materials on the soft and hard.

Do you mean seven on the hard and five on the soft?—Yes.

And yet the hard road is more open to the effect of the sun and air than the soft road?—It certainly lies higher.

Have you ever inquired of the coachmen, on which of those two descriptions of roads the carriages run the lightest?—Yes, I have; and I have found that there is no difference, if the road be equally smooth on the surface, whether it be placed on the soft ground or hard.

But in forming a road over a morass, would you bottom the road with small or large stones?—I never use large stones on the bottom of a road; I would not put a large stone in any part of it.

In forming a road across morass, would you not put some sort of intermediate material between the bog and the stone?—No, never.

Would you not put faggots?—No, no faggots.

How small would you use the stones?—Not to exceed six ounces in weight.

Have you not found that a foundation of bog sinks?—No, not a bit of the road sinks; and we have the same thickness of materials on the one as on the other.

If a road be made smooth and solid, it will be one mass, and the effect of the substrata, whether clay or sand, can never be felt in effect by carriages going over the road; because a road well made, unites itself into a body like a piece of timber or a board.