Page:Remarks on the Present System of Road Making (1823).djvu/73

 is only required to obviate the inconvenience of a very unsettled climate; and that water with alternate frost and thaw, are the evils to be guarded against, it must be obvious that nothing can be more erroneous than providing a reservoir for water under the road and giving facility to the water to pass through the road into this trench, where it is acted upon by frost to the destruction of the road.

As no artificial road can ever be made so good, and so useful as the natural soil in a ''dry state'', it is only necessary to procure, and preserve this dry state of so much ground as is intended to be occupied by a road.

The first operation in making a road should be the reverse of digging a trench. The road should not be sunk below, but rather raised above, the ordinary level of the adjacent ground, care should at any rate be taken, that there be a sufficient fall to take off the water, so that it should always be some inches below the level of the ground upon which the road is intended to be placed: this must be done, either by making drains to lower ground, or if that be not practicable, from the nature of the country, then the soil upon which the road is proposed to be laid, must be raised by addition, so as to be some inches above the level of the water.