Fort Worth weekly gazette. [volume] (Fort Worth, Tex.) 1882-1891, 1889-08-29
Some Very Interesting Facts by
Capt. Francis Y. Greene.
The Famous Roads of Ancient Rome
Inferior to Those of Modern Eu-
rOpe-The Appian Way.
The Maeadam and Telford Roads-The Excel
Ience of Broken Stone ROadways-Im-
portance of the Maintenance
of Roads.
Harper's Weekly.


where been marked by good roads. 1t
may even be said to be largely due to
them. Ancient Rome was not only IA
nous for its own roads, but it carried
the art of road-making into all its con-
quered provinces. AS its civilization
disappeared in the degeneracy of the
Dark Ages, good roads ceased to exist,
and they only reappeared when modern
nations began to emerge from the Middle
Ages. 1t is often said that the test of
civilization in any country is the con-
/ sumption of iron; but this is true only
because railroads are the chief con-
sumers of iron, and they are but one
! form Of roadway.
1t is an undeniable fact that while the
! United States has the finest railway sys-
tenn in the world-the most perfectly
adapted to the work it has to do, and the
cheapest in charges for transportation
yet its roads and its city streets are far
inferior to those of France, England,
! Germany Austria and Italy. Doubtless
the admirable character of its railways is
! itself the cause of its bad roads and
streets, for the railways serve their pur-
pose so well that there is less apparent
need of good carriage roads. All the
other countries above named had reached
a high degree of civilization before the
advent of railways about fifty years ago,
whereas about three-fourths Of the pres
/ ent area of the United States have been
settled and populated during the
railway era. The rapid advances
! in wealth and population of the
! principal countries of Europe during the
! Z IT,
| part of the Nineteenth century would
| have been impossible without CORE
spending and simultaneous improvement
! in the quality of their roads. The still
more rapid advance of America during
| this century has been accomplished
| chiefly through the instrumentality of
| railways, and these have so thoroughly
| intersected the country in every direction,
| bringing the merchant and the manufac-
| turer at one end and the farmer and
miner at the other into close cOmmunica-
ton, that the necessity of good roads has
been overlooked. The opinion is now
gaming ground, however, that nOtwlth-
standing the excellent and cheap service
of the railways, there is a great loss in
the unnecessary cost of transportation
in hauling merchandise through
| the mud to reach the railroad, and
again over rough cobble-s stones when it
leaves the cars at its destination. And
independent of the commercial aspect of
the question, there is still to be consid-
cred the comfort and convenience of
those who use roads and streets for
pleasure riding and driving, and to whom
good road surfaces are absolutely neces-
sary. During the last few years there
has been q constant increase in the atten-
ton and thought devoted to the question
of roads both without and within cities
and the object of this article is to give
briefly such information as to the history
and present condition of the art Of
road making as may be useful in this
discussion.
ROMAN ROADS.
The much-QuOted Roman roads were,
il reality, far inferior to the best roads
of modern Europe, and were much more
costly. Hence they may be dismissed in
q few words. They were stone pave
ments with a very thick concrete founda-
ton; or, as described by another writer,
they were ''masonry walls laid on their
sides - The most famous Of them was
the Appian Way, constructed about 313
B c., from Rome TO Capua, and subse-
quently extended to Brundusium
(BrindisD. The foundation consisted
of one or two courses of large, fat
stones laid in lime mortar; next came
a layer of concrete made of one part of
lime and three of broken stones, thor
Oughly mixed and consolidated by ram
ming; on this was spread thin layer of
mortar, in which the stones forming the
top course were bedded. These stones
were of basaltio lava about twelve to
fourteen inches in width, with smooth
upper surfaces but irregular sides, and
when carefully jointed together they
formed a large mosaic. The total thick
ness of the road was about three feet,
and its width varied from twelve to TWEEN
tv feet. On either side were raised foot
ways, paved with stone, and at frequent
intervals were stepping stones for mount
ing horses. It was also marked by mile
stones indicating the distance from the
forum at Rome.
This road was certainly durable, as is
proved by the fact that although it had
to be rebuilt by Tr4jan, at the end of the
First century A. D., parts of it are still
in existence, 2 200 years after it was first
constructed; but it was deficient in the
other qualities of good road. Horace
is authority for the statement that il was
''less fatiguing to people who travel
slowly"
Similar roads were built in Gaul. in
Great Britain, during the Roman occu-
patton, and in Thrace by the Emperor
Trajan.
With the decline of Rome, road
making shared the fate of the other me-
chanical arts, and for the time was for
gotten. Good roads were unknown again
in Europe until the middle of the
Eighteenth century. They were revived
almost simultaneously in France and
England, and soon afterward in the
other chief countries of Europe.
MACADASI ROADS.
Among English-speaking races the
perfection of modern roads is generally
attributed TO two Englishmen, Macadam
and Telford, who rebuilt nearly all the
English roads in the early part of this
century. Telford was a distinguished
engineer, while Macadam pr1ded himself
on being nothing but a road maker 1t !
is also generally believed that to Mac |
adam is due the principle of using small |
angular fragments of clean stone, which,
under traffic, unite into a solid mass.
The distinctive feature of Telford s roads |
was LAYER of irregular stone, from six |
to eight inches il size, carefully placed |
on fhe ground as q foundation for the /