The Cape Girardeau Democrat. (Cape Girardeau, Mo.) 1876-1909, 1895-03-23

''BREAkING" A ROAD IN MAINE.

''BREAKING" A ROAD i MAINE.
neighbours taxes have not vet been
wholly worked out" If the drifts
have been packed hard by the wind, it
may be necessary to break up the 10Y
a little before Buck and Bright can get
through, but the cattle are quite sure
to have the most of the work to their
credit when the road has been gone
over.
All this may seem a rather primitive
and crude method of procedure, con
sidering the great importance of we'll
kept highways, be the time of the year
summer or winter; but from careful con-
sideration of the matter, l am not sure
that a better method for making win
ter roads could be found. The fiatiron-
shaped snow pillow pushes the snow out
of the road and piles it up at the
sides, making the road simply a trench
to be filed with drifting snow when
ever the wind blows, which it does fire.
quently and theoretically. The sled
with the stick under its forward part
breaks through the snow and pushes
it down, making a firmer footing for
horses than could be gained in many
other ways. Here and there other
methods prevail, but a large portion of
our country roads are still made passa-
BILE in winter with the sled and oxen
that our grandfathers and great-grand-
fathers used. One of the ''other meth
ods'' prevails in the road that runs past
nv own place. After every considera-
BILE fall of snow there appears a four
horse team drawing the most enormous
roller that. l think, was ever built. 1t
is made of plank and must be some
thing like nine feet in diameter, with a
heavy oak frame about it. The roller
is long enough to make a road in
which two teams can travel abreast,
and wha-- the snow is light, it packs
down very well indeed; but in hard
snow, enormous though its weight is,
it makes but little impression because
of its great extent of bearing surface.
The story is familiar which tells how
generation after generation of men
went to mill on horseback with a bag
thrown across the horse in front of the
rider, the ''grist" in one end and q
stone in the other to balance it. When
asked why they did not throw the stone
away and put half the grain in one end
of the bag and half in the other to bal
ance it, the men of each succeeding
generation would declare that their
fathers used a rock, and that what was
good enough for their fathers was good
enough for them.
am reminded of this story by the
way our towns &C on year after year
paving out thousands of dollars for the
annual clearing of drifted winter
roads, instead of removing ono for all
the causes of drifted roads-something
that is possible to a very large extent
The cause of the formation of drifts is
usually a roadside stone wall, a board
fence, a clump of bushes, or some other
obstruction to the free play of the
wind, that could easily be removed
Many crossroads" in my W state
are every winter rendered nearly i'm
passable for several months simply be-
cause of the ~obstructing nature of the
fences, walls and bushes at the sides
of these roads. Let the bushes be cut
and light wooden or wire fences substi-
tuted for those that now u drifts,
and there would be far less need of
breaking" roads constantly from the
first of December to the last of March.
as is the ease of many localities at pres
ent-Webb Donnell, in Country Gen
tleman.