Roué

“ As we are whirled along in a railway train even, the thing that stirs our imagination is the roads, the paths. I can still remember glimpses of these that I had years ago—a footpath over a rounded hilltop through long yellow grass, a rough logging-road beside a foaming mountain river, a brushy wood road leading through bars into deep shade, a country road at dusk, curving past a low farmhouse with lights in the windows. ”

“ Amand the highway is a straight line and, as we descend, it stretches away until lost in perspective, a magnificent route for high speed, and as Jean puts the auto to its best; we skim along scarcely seeming to touch the earth,—hills rise and fall, and the motion is joyous, while the spring winds sweep the dreams of dead kings off and away, leaving only the smell of the grasses and blossoming fruit trees. ”

“ Some ten minutes’ driving, up a hill or two, while lamps grow less and less frequent, and we are out of the town, rolling along a road which is as good as an ordinary English turnpike-road—passing every now and then through spots of perfect darkness, where clumps of firs overhang the road on each side, and new again looking over a broad spread of water stretching away from our feet, with a row of distant wooded slopes appearing more and more clearly as the moon slowly rises. ”

“ To-day the iron horse, with its rattling train, carries such travellers by a different route—the screech of its whistle being just audible to wayfarers on the old road, as in mockery of their crawling pace. ”

“ The wheels were whirring like a high wind and the big body creaking and groaning with the strain. But the lights were brilliant, and one could steer to an inch. I remember thinking what an awful and yet majestic sight we should appear to anyone who met us. It was a narrow road, and we were just a great, roaring, golden death to anyone who came in our path.
We got round the corner with one wheel three feet high upon the bank. ”

“ And as the picturesque trail is converted into the eminently modern and respectable macadamized road, the equally picturesque pack-train disappears and in its place we see, and smell, that emblem of the twentieth century, the automobile. ”

“ Eastern horse would break his neck and yours, too. The driver jams on brakes; and you drop down a terribly steep grade in a series of switchbacks, or zigzags, to the Bridge. It is the most spectacularly steep road I know in America. It could not be any steeper and not drop straight; and there isn't anything between you and the drop but your horses' good sense. It is one of the places where you don't want to hit your horse; for if he jumps, the wagon will not keep to the trail. ”

“ In an ordinary road is the impression of the wheel of a Stage Coach upon the solid surface of the road so great as to make the injury apparent every time the Carriage passes over it?—It is apparent to me, because wherever there is a mark upon the road there is a consequent injury. ”

“ Is there any state of the road in which you think a wide wheel would do injury to the road?—No; there is no state of the road in which wide wheels will do an injury; if there was to be a wheel of an inch in diameter instead of six inches, it would be like a stamping wheel cutting the road constantly, but the width of the wheel takes off that; the tenacity of stone is equal to the weight. ”

“ Travellers in North America descant gloriously on the joys of their first sleigh-ride—the bright day, the brilliant sky, the sparkling snow, the excitement of the delighted rider, shared by the equally delighted horse, who finds he has exchanged the heavy draught of the wheel carriage for the scarce perceptible weight of the skate-borne berline or cutter. ”

“ What fun it would be to ride for hours without a dismount; what time I could make. This and a great deal more I had thought about, read of, and talked over. The great tow-path, the bicyclers’ paradise! Now I was there. Well, to state facts, it is no path at all, it is a common highway, and a very common one too, for everybody uses it. The soil is a mixture of clay and coarse, very coarse, gravel. Round, loose stones [20] filled the ruts and every part of the road. The inside edge of the bank is cobbled and the outside edge full of little cross ditches. ”

“ The road was wide enough for the carriage and no more; soft as a carpet, so that the wheels made no noise, with big trunks of pines, palmettoes, oaks, sweet-gums, magnolias, [143] and what not crowding upon the track so closely that we could almost put out our hands and touch them as we passed. In the whole distance, to the best of my recollection, we met neither carriage nor foot-passenger. ”

“ Here then is a solid wheel, which answers all the intentions of the garden roller; now can anything be conceived that would have so happy a tendency upon the roads? to render them smooth and even to harden and encrust the surface, and make it resemble a terrass walk? ”

“ He wondered, as the highway spun away beneath the swift wheels, which of the crossroads that he passed was the one that he had traveled the evening before, but the night had been so dark and their speed so great that he was quite unable to decide. ”

“ The road may be rough, roundabout, and steep, without precluding wholesome and hearty happiness; but if one wheel drags while the other turns, if one goes back while the other goes forward, if for any reason the two do not move by parallel lines in the same direction, the whole carriage is bewitched, the whole journey is embittered, the whole object is baffled. ”

“ The road that leads us onward may perhaps pass unrecognized as such by travellers who are used to the smooth surface over which the motor races in a cloud of dust in Western countries. But let the Author assure them that this broad track, one side supplied with rough stones picturesquely dispersed, the other chiefly consisting of ruts and holes, is indeed a road, and that, too, one whereon we have to travel. Moving along we soon forget its shortcomings in the beauty of the scenery on either hand. ”

“ The gradients have been well seen to, the road ascending by winding curves up the hillsides mostly by such easy stages as enable them to be traversed either on foot, in a carriage, motor-car, or even on a bicycle without much difficulty or fatigue. ”

“ A carriage path, well gravelled and kept perfectly free from dirt and weeds, wound around among these primeval trees, occasionally emerging from their shade, as if to give the approaching stranger an opportunity to view every part of the delightful landscape. ”

“ Will you state more definitely the nature of the injury you have seen in regard to the effect of the horses' feet, in comparison to that of the wheels of Carriages?—First of all they displace at every blow, they tear up, and throw the surface behind them; whereas the wheel only rolls as it goes, and throws some portion on both sides of it, if the road is soft. ”

“ Fancy a driver travelling every day with high wooden fences on each side, fancy the amount of good timber needed to block the open view, fancy the agony of travelling by train, and then fancy the great silliness of doctors talking like that. ”

“ Have you made any experiments, or are you able to give any information to the Committee, as to the comparative wear of roads, or injury to roads by Carriages and horses passing?—I have generally found that horses' feet do very great injury to the surface of a well-made road; and I am of opinion, that a Carriage with properly-constructed wheels does less injury to a road than the horses drawing. ”

“ What is that enormous wheel, for example, careering downhill in Berkshire in the eighteenth century? It runs faster and faster; suddenly a youth jumps out from within; next moment it leaps over the edge of a chalk pit and is dashed to smithereens. ”

“ The carriage stopped under fine single trees, at the entrance of a beautiful wood; the noise of the Lin pointed out the way by a winding path to a very thick part of the wood, facing the Lin, which at once astonishes and delights. ”

“ The long-drawn rural road I refer to, stretching over hill and dale and to which I devoted the whole of the longest day of the year—I was in a small single-horse conveyance, of which I had already made appreciative use, and with a driver as disposed as myself ever to sacrifice speed to contemplation—is doubtless familiar now with the rush of the motor-car ”

“ You travel along for many rods over excellent, dry, solid sleighing where the road is perfectly level, not thinking but you are within a foot of the ground, then suddenly descend four or five feet, and find, to your surprise, that you had been traversing the broad back of a drift. ”

“ Slowly and laboriously do the wheels of a heavy traveling carriage wind along the rugged ascent, while the heaving flanks and dilated nostrils of the noble steeds bear witness to the toilsome pathway. ”

“ The most skillful driving did not prove skillful enough to guide the staggering oxen through the way provided by the road-makers; and the constant tendency of a forward wheel to run up a tree, on one side or the other, was very trying to the drivers. ”

“ The road is built above and overlooks the plain. No pains in the original construction of twenty-odd centuries ago, nor since in its remodification or repair, has been spared towards making it an eternal highway down which as a vast speedway a half-dozen cars might race abreast. ”

“ The road is broad and smooth and level, and lies between low hedges, and has the straightness that the motorist loves; beyond the waving tamarisks a flat land of green and purple stretches away to the horizon; for the first time in many days the car speeds over the plain at the pace she loves best ”

“ On a gravelled road, which is not yet consolidated, the rolling action which causes the wear of the tire of wheels produces a great improvements of the road, when the treading action, which causes an equal wear of horses' shoes, does nothing but mischief. ”

“ Frequently the wheels of a carriage would crunch along on the other side of the high wall, at times faint distant whistles would sound from the lake, and less frequently human voices would ring into the garden from the road along the bank. ”

“ And be it further enacted, That all parts of the road which the President shall direct to be made, in case the trees are standing, shall be cleared the whole width of four rods; and the road shall be raised in the middle of the carriageway with stone, earth, or gravel and sand, or a combination of some or all of them, leaving or making, as the case may be, a ditch or water course on each side and contiguous to said carriageway, and in no instance shall there be an elevation in said road, when finished, greater than an angle of five degrees with the horizon. ”

“ All the other roads were nothing but mere horse-tracks, in the most wretched state imaginable, full of holes and great stones, so that you could seldom go faster than a walking pace without danger of breaking your neck at every step, except in those parts where the track lay through forests and open plains. ”

“ It has taken our ugly era to thrust in the railroad at the foot of the slope, among the masking trees; the railroad that is part, exactly, of the pomp and circumstance, the quickened pace, the heightened fever, the narrowed margin expressed within the very frame of the present picture, as I say, and all in the perfect good faith of collateral piety. ”

“ The soft, dry soil crumbles away, the light dust is stirred up by every passing vehicle, leaving deep ruts, so that the same road is often on different levels, and a car runs along at a sharp angle, with one wheel poised on the edge of a rut, and the other in a hollow. ”

“ There is one straight avenue in front, but the principal carriage-road has just the kind of curve most desirable, sweeping round some fine trees which group themselves for the purpose of affording an agreeable diversity. ”

“ For mile after mile I now alternately ride and trundle along donkey-paths, by the side of an artificial highway that would be an enterprise worthy of a European State. The surface of the road is either gravelled or of broken rock, and well rounded for self-drain- age; it is graded over the mountains, and wooden bridges, with substantial rock supports, are built across the streams; nothing is lacking except the vehicles to utilize it. ”

“ After your farthest wandering, you are never surprised to come forth upon the vast avenue of highway, to strike the centre point of branching alleys, or to find the aqueduct trailing, thousand-footed, through the brush. ”

“ In crossing valleys, a framing of piles to support the bearing-wheels would be quite sufficient, and the road might be left quite open between each line of wheels, as it would be impossible for the carriage to quit the track, and therefore no necessity for making a solid road for safety sake.—Civil Engineer and Architect’s Journal. ”

“ If it is on a perfectly hard road, in dry weather the road will almost be a mere tangent to the circle; but on a soft road, in damp weather, the wheel will make more or less of a rut, and the average depth of the rut will give the average for the segment. ”

“ The slope here is so precipitous as to be impracticable for horses. A railway has accordingly been constructed, but the car is pulled up this almost perpendicular height not by steam or electricity, but by rope and pulleys, along the rails! ”

“ This vale serves the purpose of a road. It is a tedious maze and perpetual declivity, and requires, from the passenger, a cautious and sure foot. Openings and ascents occasionally present themselves on each side, which seem to promise you access to the interior region, but always terminate, sooner or later, in insuperable difficulties, at the verge of a precipice or the bottom of a steep. ”