ROADSTEAD

A place of anchorage. A ve el when at anchor is termed a roadster, in contradistinction to another under sail. ROADS, are pathways formed through a country, by which pa engers and commodities may travel, or be transported, with more or le facility and expedition, from one place to another. Ifoads are of various kinds, according to the state of civilization and wealth of the country through which they are constructed, and according to the nature and extent of the traffic to be carried on upon them, — from the rude paths of the aboriginal people, carried in direct lines over the natural surface of the country, pa able only by foot pa engers or packhorses, to the comparatively perfect modern road, carried on an artificial causeway, and reduced to a nearly level surface at enormous expense by means of vast excavations, extensive embankments, bridges, viaducts, tunnels, and other expedients supplied by the skill and ingenuity of the civil engineer. Advantages of Roads — There is no expedient which more powerfully conduces to the advancement of a people in civiUzation, or to the extension of their prosperity and national wealth, than the construction of good roads, connecting the various centres of commerce and of industry about which they may have collected themselves. The mvention of printing, the expedient of money, the adoption of a uniform system of weiglits and measures, would severally be ineffectual, or productive of advantages of a very limited extent, if the intercommunication of those whose feelings and ideas are expre ed and conveyed in print, and among whom money is made to circulate, and whose commerce is stimulated and facilitated by the uniform module of quantity supplied by weights and measures, were not facilitated and expedited by the means of conveyance supplied by roads. Without roads, the interchange of advantages, moral, intellectual, and physical, which now takes place in all highly civilized countries between the rural and the urbane population, could not be maintained; without them, indeed, large towns or cities could not continue to exist. The supply of the population collected in such places with the various products of agriculture, nece ary to their pliysical existei^ce, could not be sustained. Nor, on the other hand, would the rural population affording that supply be benefited by a return in exchange of the refinements of the town, and the various articles of luxury and nece ity obtained by commerce from every part of the globe. But roads are not le nece ary for the advancement of agriculture itself, than for the due maintenance of the nece ary relations between the towns and the country. Without the aid of roads, it would be impo ible to apply those arts to the soil by which increased powers of production are given to it. Without roads, the various kinds of manure, by which the scientific farmer knows how to raise augmented crops, could not be transported to his fields from the place, often distant and difficult of acce , where such manures are found. Roads may then, in fact, be considered as a system of veins and arteries, by which all those principles nece ary for the maintenance of the prosperity of a country are kept in circulation. History of Roads The importance of roads to the welfare of nations was not unknown to the ancients. The senate of Athens, the government of the Lace demon i ans, the The bans, and other states of Greece, bestowed much care upon them; but, as might naturally be expected, the first great advances in the art of intercommunication by roads were due to a people e entially commercial. The invention of paved roads is traced to the Cart hag in i ans. Rome, ever awake to the advantages to be gained from conquered people, followed in the steps of the Cart hag in i ans, and vastly extended and improved their proce es in the construction of roads. The Via Appia, the Via Aurelia, and the Via Flaminia were the first great monuments of the Roman people in this department of art. Under Julius Caesar, the capital of the empire was made to communicate with all the chief towns by paved roads; and during the last African war, a road of this kind was constructed from Spain through Gaul to the Alps. After this, these great lines of communication were extended through Savoy, Dauphinc, and Provence; through Germany, every part of Spain; throughGaul, and even toConstantinople; through Asia, Hungary, Macedonia, and to the mouths of the Danube. Neither did the interposition of seas obstruct the labour or daunt the enterprise of this great people. The lines of communication thus constructed to the shores of the continent of Europe were continued at corresponding points of the neighbouring islands and continents. Sicily, Corsica, Sardinia, England, Africa, and Asia were accordingly intersected and penetrated l)y roads, forming the continuation of the great European lines. These gigantic works were not mere paths prepared for the action of the feet of horses and the wheels of carriages, formed upon the natural surface of the ground, but were constructed on principles in some 1059 ROADS. respects as efficient as those which modern engineering has supplied; forests were opened, mountains excavated, hill slowered, valleys filled up, chasms and rivers bestridden by bridges, and marshes drained, to an extent which would bear no mean comparison to the result of the great engineering enterprise of recent times. English Roads. — The first roads of artificial construction in England were those formed by the Romans while it was a Roman province. A grand trunk road was carried through the country north and south, and another nearly at right angles to it east and west. These main lines were supplied with branches, extending in every direction whicli the conquerors found it expedient to render acce ible to their arms. The Roman road called Watling Street commenced from Rich borough in Kent, the ancient Ruterpiac, and being carried through London in a north-westerly direction, was continued to Chester. The road called Ermine Street commenced from London, and pa ing through Lincoln was carried thence through Car lisle into Scotland. The Fo Way pa ed from Bath, in a direction north-east, and joined the Ermine Street. The road called Ikenald extended from Norwich, in a southward direction, to Dor sets hire. The example thus afforded by their conquerors was not followed by the Britons, who, unconscious of the many advantages attending facilities of intercommunication, relapsed into the barbarous neglect of roads; and while the Roman ways were allowed to fall into decay, new roads were not constructed. For many centuries, such intercourse as was maintained between the various parts of this country took place ahnost exclusively by rude paths, capable of being pa ed on foot, or at best by horses, carried over the natural surface of the ground in straight directions from place to place. Hills were surmounted, valleys cro ed, and rivers forded, in the same manner as the savages of the most remote wilds of America now communicate with each other, or with the settlers. It was not till the reign of Charles IL that any attempt was made by tlie legislature to improve the roads of the country. In the l(jth year of the reign of that monarch, the first turnpike-road was established by law, whereon toll was taken. It pa ed through Hertfordshire, Cambridge shire, and Hunting dons hire. It was not, however, till about a century from the present time, that any great or effectual attempts were made to establish a system of good roads through the country. Till nearly the middle of the last century, most of the goods were conveyed from place to place in Scotland on packhorses. Oatmeal, coals, turf, and even straw and hay, were conveyed in this way; but in carrying goods between distant places it was nece ary to employ a cart, as all that a horse could carry on his back was not sufficient to defray the cost of a long journey. The time that the carriers usually required to perform their journeys seems now almost incredible: the common carrier" between Selkirk and Edinburgh, a distance of thirty-eight miles, required a fortnight for his journey, going and returning. The road, for a considerable extent, lay along the bottom of the district called Gait Water; the bed of the stream, when not flooded, being the tract chosen, as the most level and easiest to travel in. Nor were the means of travelling between large towns much better. In 1678, a contract was made to establish a coach between Edinburgh and Glasgow, a distance of forty-four miles. This coach was to be drawn by six horses, and the journey between the places, to and Irom, was engaged to be completed in six days; even so recently as the year 1750, the stagecoach from Edinburgh to Glasgow took a day and a half to make the journey. In the year 1763, there was but one stage coach between Edinburgh and London, which started once a month from each place, and took a fortnight to perform the journey. At the present time, after the lapse of not so much as eighty years, there are seven coaches daily start from each of these cities for the other; besides several steam ships of enormous magnitude, which sail weekly from each place, supplying all the accommodation and luxury of floating hotels, and completing the journey, in common with the coaches, in le than forty-eight hours. If each of the coaches be estimated as conveying ten pa engers daily, the coaches alone would thus convey daily between these cities about 140 pa engers, or above 4000 monthly. If an equal number be estimated as conveyed by the steam ships, we should have the present intercourse in pa engers between London and Edinburgh amounting to about 8000 monthly; whereas, in 1 763, the number conveyed by stage coaches between these places monthly could not have exceeded twenty-five, and by all the means of conveyance then existing probably did not exceed fifty. It happens that the line of road now occupied by the Liverpool and Manchester Railway and its branches, and travelled daily by you sands of pa engers, at a speed of twenty-five miles an hour, including stoppages, was, in the year 1770, travelled over by Mr. Arthur Young, who has left us in his Tour the following account of the state of the roads at tha.t time: — "I know not in the whole 3 Y 2 [s. 1072]