LOCATION.
When a new road is laid out it is important that it should be located
in the best attainable place, considering the natural formation of the
surrounding country; for when a highway is once established it is
impossible to say how long the tide of humanity and commercial traffic
will seek passage over it. While the ordinary processes of
Nature--rain, thaw, and frost--are ever at work lowering the hills and
mountains and filling up the valleys and lowlands, the public highways
of a country remain in the same relative positions from age to age.
The great commercial and military highway which in the early dawn of
Roman history led from the banks of the placid Euphrates to the banks
of the many-mouthed Nile--over which Abraham once wended his weary
steps on his way to Canaan, over which the hosts of Xerxes and the
brave phalanxes of Alexander the Great once passed in all the pride and
glory of war, over which the wise men of the East probably journeyed in
search of him who was born King of the Jews, over which Mary fled with
Christ in her flight into Egypt, and along which the early Christians
travelled as they went forth to preach the fatherhood of God and the
brotherhood of men--is to-day the highway over which is carried on the
overland intercourse between the Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf.
Many of the present roads in Italy and the neighboring countries are
identical with the roads over which Caesar, Cicero, and other Romans
travelled in the olden days; and the modern British roads are the same,
in many cases, as those used by the ancient Britons before the
Anglo-Saxon conquest.
The law of the survival of the fittest is applicable to the location of
roads, and any well-located road is liable to be used as a public way
during the occupancy of the earth by the human race; and if it is not
made famous by the passage of illustrious persons or sanctified by the
footsteps of saints, yet it is liable to be travelled through coming
ages by "mute inglorious Miltons" and by "care-encumbered men." It
sometimes happens that men and women, in doing faithfully and well the
nearest duty, perform work which turns out better than they expect.
"The hand that rounded Peter's dome,
And groined the aisles of Christian Rome,
Wrought in a sad sincerity;
* * * *
He builded better than he knew."
The originators of many great reforms in law and religion, in working
to establish principles applicable and needful to local issues, have
thereby, unconsciously to themselves, established principles which have
proved beneficial and applicable to the whole human race. In the stress
of trying times we have discovered in the constitution of our country
latent powers which its framers never dreamed were there. Thus it is
with the humble occupation of road-building. A road constructed for the
convenience of some primitive community or to gratify the caprice of
some rich man or lordly ruler becomes often in after years an Appian
Way for public travel and commercial intercourse.
A road may be located in one of three ways. It may be laid out in a
straight line by crossing lowlands in the mud and going over hills at
steep grades. The ancient Britons, like the early settlers in this
country, established their homesteads and villages on commanding
situations, and ran their roads and bridle-paths in direct courses by
their habitations. The Romans, possessors of great wealth and abundant
slave-labor, built their military and public roads in direct lines from
place to place, regardless of expense. In this way they shortened
distances somewhat, but their roads must have been constructed at
enormous expense in money and labor. Their roads were marvels of
engineering skill and workmanship, which even now, after the lapse of
eighteen centuries, impress every thoughtful observer with the idea
that he is in the presence of the work of the immortals. They threw
arched bridges of solid masonry over rivers and across ravines; they
cut tunnels through mountains, and sometimes carried their roads
underground for the sole purpose of shelter from the sun; they levelled
heights and made deep cuts through hills; and when they came to a marsh
they built a causeway high enough and strong enough to make it safe and
dry at all seasons of the year. This mode of location is still followed
in the Latin countries of Italy, France, and Spain, where many of the
roads are identical with the old Roman roads.
The other mode of locating a highway is to seek the best attainable
grade the country will permit of by winding through valleys and around
and across hills. There is obviously one advantage to a perfectly
straight road between two places: _it is the nearest route_. But this
is about the only advantage a straight road has over a curved one. In a
hilly country a straight road is frequently no shorter than a curved
one, because the distance around a hill is generally no greater than
over it, as the length of a pail-handle is the same whether it is
vertical or in a horizontal position. In an uneven country a straight
road with anything like the same grade as the curved road can only be
constructed at enormous and unnecessary expense and labor. Even in a
level country a road curved sufficiently to give variety of view and to
conform to Hogarth's "line of beauty" is preferable to a perfectly
straight road, which is always tedious to the traveller.
"The road the human being travels,
That on which blessing comes and goes, doth follow
The river's course, the valley's playful windings,
Curves round the corn-field and the hill of vines."
Moreover, we are told by competent engineers that the difference in
length between a straight and a slightly curved road is very small.
Thus, if a road between two places ten miles apart was made to curve
so that the eye could nowhere see farther than a quarter of a mile
of it at once, its length would exceed that of a perfectly straight
road between the same points by only about one hundred and fifty
yards.
But, in any event, in road-making mere straightness should always
yield to a level grade, even if thereby the distance is greatly
increased; for on a good grade a horse can draw rapidly and easily a
load which it would be impossible for him to draw on a steep grade.
It is an accepted maxim by road-engineers that the horizontal length
of a road may be advantageously increased, to avoid an ascent, by at
least twenty times the perpendicular height which is to be thus
saved; that is, to escape a hill a hundred feet high, it would be
proper for the road to make such a circuit as would increase its
length to two thousand feet.
Hence it is apparent that the ordinary road in a hilly and uneven
country should follow the streams as far as possible, as Nature has
located them in the places best adapted for highways; and when hills
are found on the line of a road they should be surmounted by passing
around and across them at the easiest grades possible rather than
over them at steep grades.