In building a country road, a stone bed from 20 to 25 centimetres thick is made with a covering of gravel from 10 to 15 centimetres thick. The cost of 1 kilometre of road, purchase of ground included, is, at the minimum, 15,000 francs, and in some localities as high as 100,000 francs. The use of material depends largely on the location or nature of the country through which the road is to run. For the stone bed, river stones are generally preferred, and for the covering river gravel, but where these can not be had quarry stone and quarry gravel are substituted. The cost of keeping the road in good order will be, per year, from 300 to 2,500 francs per kilometre, according to the use of the road and the price and quality of the material used for repairing it. I received last year a letter from A. L. Bancroft, dated San Francisco, June 25, 1890, which, with my reply to the same, will prove interesting in this connection. Our correspondence was as below given: SAN FRANCISCO, June 25, 1890. DEAR SIR: A movement is inaugurated in one of our counties to name and measure the roads, number the country houses, and place guideboards at the crossings and junctions. As interest is already manifest in other directions, and the movement is likely to spread, I would be thankful to know something of these features in the country where you represent our Government. Are the country roads named? Are the country houses numbered? If they are numbered, is it done upon any such plan as the "ten-block system"? Are there any celebrated roads, ancient or modern, like Via Appia and Strada della Cornice, of Italy, Watling Street, of England, and the National Road from Washington to Cincinnati in the United States? Will you kindly give the names and descriptions of some of the noted roads in your country? I will probably make use of the information asked for in a paper for publication. By complying with this request I will esteem it a particular favor. Very truly, A. L. BANcroft. Mr. W. HENRy Robertson, United States Consul, St. Gall, Switzerland. To Mr. Bancroft's letter I replied as follows: UNITED STATES CONSULATE, SIR: As an answer to your letter of the 25th ult., I do not think I can do better than to send you the enclosed copy of a reply from the honorable secretary of the interior, of the canton of St. Gallen, to an inquiry of my own based upon the subject of your communication, above referred to. The honorable secretary has very courteously, promptly, and, I think, very clearly, covered the points to which you referred. I take pleasure in serving you in this matter. Respectfully, A. L. BANCROFT, Esq., 132 Post Street, San Francisco. W. HENRY ROBERTSON, Consul. [Inclosure.] To the Honorable W. HENRY ROBERTSON, United States Consul, St. Gall: ST. GALL, July 18, 1890. I hasten to answer your very esteemed letter of to-day with the following notes: (1) Are the country roads named?-Answer. They generally bear the names of the principal places they connect. So have we, for instance, the St. Gallen, the Zurich road, the Rorschach road, the Thurgan road, etc. (2) Are the country houses numbered?--Answer. Yes; but the houses bear only a number indicating the fire insurance, and are of no use in guiding the public. The numbers do not follow each other regularly. A new-built house often gets the next highest running number. But every isolated farm has its own name. The same is the case with every little hamlet. The country people are well acquainted with these names, which very often date hundreds of years ago. If a letter to a countryman must be addressed, it will bear the name of the house or hamlet, never the number of the house. (3) Are there any celebrated roads like the Via Appia or the National Road from Washington to Cincinnati?-Auswer. Yes. The Alpine passes, for instance, the Gotthard road, the Simplon road, the passes of Furca, Oberalp, Albula, Tulier, Splügen, Bernina. In the level country there are no roads with well-known historical names. The country roads are divided by kilometre stones. At every distance of 1 kilometre there is a small stone, and every 5 kilometres is put a large one. At junctions and crossings are high iron or wooden posts, which guide the public and note the distances to the nearest villages and cities. The system of dividing the streets (roads) in imaginary blocks could in our mountainous and hilly country scarcely be adopted. In our cities this system is in use also, but in the country, where very few new houses are built, it would not apply. There in the United States most houses are situated alongside public roads, while in many parts of Switzerland the houses are scattered and sown all over the hills and valleys, and only by narrow footpaths connected with the main roads. I shall be very glad, Mr. Consul, if I can serve in this matter or in any other way, and I only beg to excuse my English. With highest esteem, I am, sir, your obedient servant, W. KÜNZLE, In thus concluding, I beg to acknowledge the very valuable assistance rendered me by the building department of the canton of St. Gall in the preparation of this report. UNITED KINGDOM. ENGLAND. BRITISH HIGHWAYS. REPORT BY CONSUL JARRETT, OF BIRMINGHAM. It is impossible in a report like this to present a survey of the highways of Great Britain, or to give a detailed statement of the method of their construction. Construction.-Many of them were designed and built by the Romans, and as far as I can discover, nearly all of the existing national roads. were designed and constructed before the commencement of the present century. The systems on which these roads were constructed all involved the preparation of the ground, according to the character of the soil on which the road was built. Pounding the soil to make it firm, driving in piles, or laying on planks or logs crosswise if the soil was boggy, or sometimes placing large rocks, were the usual way of preparing the substratum. This being done, a bed of concrete from 6 to 10 inches thick, or large blocks of stone were carefully and compactly laid to form what was called the subroad, over which was placed the road proper, which was composed of either prepared slabs or blocks of stone, broken stone, or gravel and sand. About a century ago John Loudan Macadam inaugurated a new system of road making and repairing, to explain which I can do no better here than insert an article clipped from the Southern Planter, of November last, which I find is taken from the evidence of Macadam taken before a Parliamentary committee in 1889: Macadam's plan of road making differed as much from the old way which he found in operation as a bridge does from a ford. Instead of going deep for a "bottoming," he worked solely on the top. Instead of producing a peaked, roof-like mass of rough, soft rubbish, he got a flat, smooth, and solid surface. In lieu of a road 43 feet through, he made one of at most 10 inches in thickness; and for rocks and bowlders he substituted stone broken small. His leading principle was that a road ought to be considered as an artificial flooring, so strong and even as to let the heaviest vehicle pass over it without impediment. Then people began to hear with wonder of roads 30 and 40 feet wide rising only 3 inches in the center, and he propounded the extraordinary heresy that a better and more lasting road could be made over the naked surface of a morass than over solid rock. Another of his easy first principles was that the native soil was more resistant when dry than when wet, and that, as in reality it had to carry not alone the traffic but the road also, it ought to be kept in a condition of the greatest resistance; that the best way of keeping it dry was to put over it a covering impervious to rain-the road, in fact; and that the thickness of this covering was to be regulated solely in its relation to its imperviousness, and not at all as to its bearing of weights, to which the native soil was quite equal. Instead of digging a trench, therefore, to do away with the surface of the native soil, he carefully respected it, and raised the road sufficiently above it to let the water run off. Impermeability he obtained by the practical discovery ! that stones broken small and shaken and pressed together, as by the traffic ou a road, rapidly settled down face to face and angle with angle, and made as close a mass as a wall. Mankind now believe that this last is all that Macadamı invented; the rest is forgotten. That important fraction of his discoveries is what has given to us the verb to macadamize ("to pave a road with small broken stones."-Skeat). Surprise followed surprise. Roads which were mere layers of broken stone, 6, 4, and even as little as 3 inches in thickness, passed through the worst winters without breaking up, while, as the coachman used to say, they "ran true; the wheel ran hard upon them; it ran upon the nail." Commissioners could not believe their eyes when they saw new roads made for much less than it had cost them yearly to repair the old .ones. When an old road was given into Macadam's charge, he often made a new one of it for £88 ($440) a mile, while around London the cost of annual repairs had been £470 ($2,350) a mile. For he knew that the roads-such had been the ignoraut waste generally contained materials enough for their use for several years if properly applied. Unless the road was hopeless, he went to work in a practical, cheap way; first cutting off the "gridiron " of ruts in the center "to a level with the bottom of the 'furrows,'" then "picking" the road up to a depth of 4 inches, removing all the chalk, clay, or mud, breaking the largest stones snall, and simply putting them back again, and one of his directions to his workmen was that " nothing is to be laid on. the clean stone on pretense of binding." But too often the road was so bad, as at Egham, that it had to be removed to its foundations. For the repairs of his roads, when once made, he always chose wet weather, and “loosened the hardened surface with a pick" before putting on the first broken stone; things familiar enough to us now, but paradoxes then to all the confraternities of the roads. In this way he had the greatest success with the freestone near Bath, and on a road out of Bristol toward Old Down, where everybody had always said a good road never would be made with the material available. This impossible road of 11 miles, which the postmaster-general, as a last resource, was about to indict, he perfected in 2 months, in 1816, for £55 ($275) a mile. Indeed, as to materials, they were to some extent a matter of indifference to him, provided they were stones and stones only. Even in the breaking of the stones Macadam made a revolution. He saw that able-bodied men standing up with hammers wasted the greater portion of their strength. He made his stonebreakers sit, so that all the force of the blows took direct effect on the stone; and the result was that he found small hammers did the work perfectly well, and thus was able to confine it to old men past hard labor, women and boys, which reduced the cost of the broken stone by one-half. The size to which the stone should be broken he determined in a practical way by the area of contact of an ordinary wheel with a smooth road. This he found to be about an inch lengthwise, and therefore he laid it dowu that "a stone which exceeds an inch in any of its dimensions is mischievous," that is to say, that the wheel in pressing on one end of it tends to lift the other end out of the road. In practice he found it simplest to fix a weight of 6 ounces, and his surveyors carried about scales to test the largest stones in each heap. He would allow no large stones even for the foundation of his roads, for he found that they constantly worked upward by the pressure and vibration of the traffic. The whole road was small broken stone, even over swampy ground.-St. James Gazette. From practical experience extending over many years as a member of a highway board having charge of about 25 miles of heavily trafficked road, we are able to say that the application of the principles of road making and repairing laid down in the above article will secure a perfect highway. We worked upon the system invented by Mr. Macadam, using both hand broken and machine-broken stones, and either a heavy horse roller or a steam roller, and made and maintained roads over which upon steep grades one horse could haul a ton in a cart weighing from 1,200 to 1,500 pounds with ease. The state of the roads made in the manner advised, may be judged from 1 the fact recorded a few days ago in England, that at the recent coutest for the championship of the world on a bicycle on the highway, the winner rode in a direct line 336 miles in 24 consecutive hours.-ED. In constructing a new road, Macadam usually did it in what he termed "three times." He first placed a layer of broken stone 4 inches thick, which was worked until it was set, when another layer of about 4 inches of broken stone was added, which in turn was worked until it was set, when the last layer of broken stone was added. As to the kind of stone used, the whinstone seems to have been Macadams' favorite, followed by flint, limestone, and pebbles. Burgoyne, in his "Construction of roads," published in 1860, says: The most important quality in stone for road making is toughness; mere hardness without toughness is of no use, as such stone becomes rapidly reduced to powder by the action of the wheels. Those stones which have been found to answer this purpose best are the whinstones, basalts, granites, and beach pebbles. The softer descriptions of stone, such as the sandstones, are not fitted for this purpose, being far too weak to resist the crushing action of the wheels. The harder and more compact limestones may be employed; but generally speaking, the limestones are to be avoided in consequence of their great affinity for water, which causes them, in frosty weather, which has been preceded by wet, to split up into a pulverulent state, and destroys the solidity of the road. It is extremely difficult to arrive at the first cost of construction or that of repairing and keeping in good order the roads of this country, as I fail to discover any reliable data on the subject. The labor employed at this class of work is, and has been of the cheapest kind. Criminals have also been largely employed for this purpose. At stone breaking, women and children are still employed. During times of depression, workmen out of work are often employed for as low as 36 cents and 61 cents per day, at stone breaking and road repairing. The men employed at this work regularly are paid from 61 cents to 73 cents per day. An approximate estimate of the cost of keeping in repair country roads would be from 3 cents to 5 cents per superficial yard. The probable cost of construction of new roads, irrespective of the value of the land, would be from 49 cents to 73 cents per superficial yard. Tollgates. The roads in England were until recently under the control and management of certain bodies called turnpike trusts or trustees, who were usually appointed by acts of Parliament applying to separate and distinct districts. Under these acts the turnpike trustees were authorized to collect from the drivers of all vehicles or from persons traveling on horseback, small sums which were called tolls. These tolls were collected in the highroads at various points at a tollhouse, being a small two-roomed cottage erected close up to the road, where a tollgate was fixed. This gate was a five-barred gate which was kept locked, and opened for each passenger on payment of the toll. These tollhouses would in some districts be from 4 to 5 miles apart, and in others would be within much shorter distances, as the traveler |