The Cecil Whig

Farm and Household.

Ascent in Roads.

All roads not perfectly level may be regarded as inclined planes. If the load and wagon weigh a ton, and the road rise one foot in height to every five feet of distance, then the increased strength required to draw the load will be one-fifth of its weight, or equal to 400 pounds. If it rise only one foot in twenty, then the increase in power needed to ascend this plane will be only 100 pounds. The great importance of preserving as nearly as practicable a perfect level is very obvious.

There are many roads made in this country, rising over and descending hills, which might be made nearly level by deviating a little to the right or to the left. Suppose, for example, that a road be required to connect two points three miles apart, but separated by a lofty hill midway between them, and one mile in diameter. Passing half a mile on either side would entirely avoid the hill, and the road thus curved would be only one hundred and forty-eight yards, or one-twelfth of a mile longer.

The same steep hill is ascended perhaps fifty to five hundred times a year by a hundred different farmers, expending an amount of strength, in the aggregate, sufficient to elevate ten thousand tons annually to this height, as a calculation will at once show—more than enough for all the increased expense of making the road level.

It is interesting and important to examine how much further it is expedient to carry a road through a circuitous level course than over a hill. To ascertain this point, we must take into view the resistance occasioned by the rough surface or soft material of the road. Roads vary greatly in this particular, but the following may be considered as about a fair average. In drawing a ton weight (including wagon) on freely running wheels, on a perfect level, the strength exerted will be found about equal to the following:

On a hard, smooth plank road... 40 pounds
On a good Macadam road.... 60
On a common good hard road....100
On a soft road, about.. 200

Now let us compare this resistance to the resistance of drawing up hill. First, for the plank road—forty pounds is one fiftieth of a ton; therefore a rise of one foot in fifty of length will increase the draught equal to the resistance of the road. Hence the road might be increased fifty feet in length to avoid an ascent of one foot; or, at the same rate, it might be increased one mile in length to avoid an ascent of one hundred and five feet. But in this estimate the increase in cost of making the longer road is not taken into account. If making and keeping in repair be equal to three hundred dollars yearly per mile, and one hundred teams pass over it daily, at a cost for traveling of four cents each per mile, being four dollars daily, or twelve hundred dollars per annum, then the cost of making and repair would be one quarter of the expense of traveling over it. Therefore the mile should be diminished one quarter in length to make these two sources of expense counterbalance each other. Hence a road with this amount of travel should, with a reference to public accommodation, be made three-fourths of a mile longer to avoid a hill of one hundred and five feet. This estimate applies to loaded teams only. For light carriages the advantages of the level road would not be so great. One-half to five-eighths of a mile would, therefore, be a fair estimate for all kinds of traveling taken together.

The same kind of reasoning applied to a common good road will show that it will be profitable for the public to travel about half that distance to avoid a hill of one hundred and five feet. In this case the whole yearly cost of the road, including interest on the land, and the cost of repairs, would not usually be more than a tenth part of the same cost for plank, or would not exceed thirty dollars.

On railroads, where the resistance is only about one-fifth part of the resistance of plank roads, the disproportion between the draught on a level and up an ascent becomes many times greater. Thus, if a single engine will move three hundred and fifty tons on a level, then two engines will be required for an ascent of only twenty feet per mile, four engines for fifty feet per mile, and six engines for eighty feet per mile.

Such estimates as these merit the attention of the farmer in laying out his own private farm roads. It may be worthy of considerable effort to avoid a hill of ten or twenty feet, which must be passed over a hundred times yearly with loads of manure, grain, hay and wood. The greatly increased resistance of soft materials, also, is too rarely taken into account. A few loads of gravel, well applied, would often prevent ten times the labor in plowing through deep ruts, to say nothing of the breaking of harness and wagons by the excessive exertions of the team.

FORM AND MATERIALS FOR ROADS.

The depth of the mud in common roads is often unnecessarily great, in consequence of heaping together with the plow and scraper the soft top soil for the raised carriage way.

When heavy rains fall, this forms a deep bed of mud, into which the wheels work their way, and cause extreme labor to the team. A much better way is to scrape off and cart away into the fields adjoining all the soft, rich, upper surface, and then to form the harder subsoil into a slightly rounded carriage-way, with a ditch on each side. Such roads as this have a very hard and firm foundation, and they have been found not to cut up into ruts, nor to form much mud, even in the wettest seasons.

On this hard foundation six inches of gravel will endure longer and form a better surface than twelve inches on a raised "turnpike" of soft soil and mud.

It frequently happens that the form of the surface increases the quantity of mud in a road, by not allowing the water to flow off freely. The earth is heaped up in a high ridge, but having little slope on the top, where the water lodges, and ruts are formed, the only dry portions being on the brink of the ditches, where the water can escape.

Instead of this form, there should be a gradual inclination from the centre to the ditches. This inclination should not exceed one foot in twenty. On hillsides the slope should all be toward the higher ground.

Hard and durable roads are made on the plan of Telford. Their foundation is rounded stones, placed upright, with the smaller or sharp ends upward. The smaller stones are placed near the sides, and the larger at the centre, thus giving to the road a convex form. The spaces are then filled in with small broken stone, and the whole covered with the same material or with gravel. The pressure of wagons crowds it compactly between the stones, and forms a very hard mass.

IMPORTANCE OF GOOD ROADS.

The principle of road-making should be better understood by the community at large. Farmers are deeply interested in good roads. Nearness to market, and facilities for all other kinds of communication, are worth a great deal, often materially affecting the price of land and its products. The difference between traveling ten miles through deep mud, at two miles per hour, with half a load, and traveling ten miles over a fine road, at five miles per hour, with a full load, should not be forgotten.

"In the absence of such facilities," says Gillespie, "the richest productions of nature waste on the spot of their growth. The luxuriant crops of our Western prairies are sometimes left to decay on the ground, because there are no rapid and easy means of conveying them to market. The rich mines in the northern part of the State of New York are comparatively valueless, because the roads among the mountains are so few and so bad, that the expense of the transportation of the metal would exceed its value.

So, too, in Spain it has been known, after a succession of abundant harvests, that the wheat has actually been allowed to rot, because it would not repay the cost of carriage." Again, "When the Spanish government required a supply of grain to be transferred from Old Castile to Madrid, 30,000 horses and mules were necessary for the transportation of four hundred and eighty tons of wheat. Upon a broken stone road of the best sort, one hundredth of that number could easily have done the work."

He further adds, in speaking of the improvements in roads made by Marshal Wade in the Scottish Highlands, "His military road is said to have done more for the civilization of the Highlands than the preceding efforts of all the British monarchs. But the later roads, under the more scientific direction of Telford, produced a change in the state of the people which is probably unparalleled in the history of any country for the same space of time. Large crops of wheat now cover former wastes; farmers' houses and herds of cattle are now seen where was previously a desert; estates have increased seven-fold in value and annual returns; and the country has been advanced at least one hundred years."