Atlanta semi-weekly journal. (Atlanta, Ga.) 1898-1920, 1919-01-03
ROADMAKING
By John Brock.

T T is an ingenious animal, this creature
called man, and courageous withal. He
merits reward for some of his achive-
ments. 1 have seen one start out to tame a
mountain road for the of the automo-
bile, which has neither hOof nor claw for
clinging to the sleeps of a rockhillside and
straddles broader trail than natures trav-
alers.
He loads some wagons with dynamite,
pork, and tobacco, and sallies forth into the
Wilderness few odds and ends such as
shovels, picks, and scrapers are tied to the
wagon tail and he rustles an odd assortment
of Indians to drive the teams Then he is
set. For he works not so much with men
and tools as with an indomitable will.
He does not tell how he found the noun
tain spring by which he pitched his camp
probably he followed the old coon's trail. He
reaches a wall of granite forty feet sheer
above where his road shall lie. 1t daunts
him not at all. He drills, sets in stick OF
dynamite so, and seats himself comfort
ably on a fuse-box to smoke his pipe until
the blast goes off. Presently a part of his
distractions leaps from the spot where it
has slept since the world was young and
races down the mOuntainsde 1t is aWesome
to see rocks weighing several tons flee be-
fore him like rabbits surprised in their
forms; it gives you a WhOlesOm respect for
the power of man to work his will with the
elemental things. But he merely shakes the
dottel out of his pipe and hicks a fuse into
a fresh stick of rock cartridge as nonchant-
ly as one loads a gun for quail.
He has a fondness for the smaller rocks.
corralling them as carefully as he does his
working stock. For there is a gully to be
filled just beyond. They will go into a dry
retaining wall to hold his rOadbed from melt
ing in the floods. Each stone will be fitted
into it's neighbor stone snugly as they
rested in the hill
And he does this with the Indians and the
mules, working each according to his capac-
ity. And neither one nor the other shares
his dream of what is being accomplished.
Every spoonful of dirt, every stone, is moved
according to his vision and his will.
There is tinge of the miraculous about
it. Every here and there he has set in a
huge corrugated iron drain. However he
got them there remains a mystery, for they
seem beyond the power Of mules men. 1T
h>+le<&- all his fonAAS eae,aa beae+n usAse
| them one by one up the grades that he his
. made, but the laying Of them in their beds
remains sheer WitchCraft Those things were
made to be handled by some more powerful
tackle than six diplapidated harnesses and a
section or so of logging chain. But here
they are.
| I watch the wizard himself working his
way with his gang, somewhat by the gift of
tongues, mixed American and Spanish weld
| ed by a DrOgue; somewhat by waving his
hands after the fashion of shepherd direct
ing distant dog. Indeed their intelligences
are distant enough to warrant it, And I
mourn that the gems of Celtic wit by which
he relieves his inner tensions are wasted on
the mountain wind. Once I chuckled softly,
and he turned toward me quizzcally lifted
| brush Of eyebrow; even wizard likes to
have his sense of humor shared. A big
black man, with hazel eyes showing strange
~ from his tanned face; easy-tempered, but
firm as the stuff he works in. A man to the
fullest meaning of the word.
And 1 wonder if of those who use his
handiwork in other days there will be one
who thinks that he is driving through a year
OF mans life. Not that man himself will
care; his reward viii lie in getting it done