Evening Republican, Volume 17, Number 65, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 March 1913 — KNEW VALUE OF GOOD ROADS [ARTICLE]

KNEW VALUE OF GOOD ROADS

Rulers of Great Empires of Centuries Ago Also Proved themselves Capable of Building Them.

Savage man built nothing that can be called a road. When he was hungry he sought food in the forests, or in the streams and lakes, and finally ( made for himself definite trails. These trails became at last the first roads. Mr. L. W. Page, in “Roads, Paths and Bridges,” tells of the stone-surfaced roads found in Egypt, built tho’usands of years ago, of massive stone blocks, in some places ten feet thick. It was over such a substantial road as thio that thq stones used in the construction of the great ( Pyramids were hauled.

Egypt is not the only land possessing relics of early road-building. Babylon, the city of hanging gardens and great walls, at a very early date developed a high state of civilization, and Semiramis, its great queen, was an enthusiastic road-builder. It is at tills period that we find what is probably the first use ot stone in bridgebuilding. The two portions of the city were joined by a bridge cross the Euphrates. This wonderful bridge was built of large stone blocks, joined with plates of lead. At that period, more than 2,000 years before Christ, asphalt was used instead of mortar in constructing the vast walls round the city. Commerce flourished, and great highways radiated to all the principal cities of the known world. It is said that a highway 400 miles long, paved with brick set in a mortar of asphaltum, connected Niiieveh and Babylon. It was left to the Carthaginians to become instructors to the world in the art of road-building. Carthage is given the credit of having demonstrated to the world the strategic and ecbnomlc value ‘of improved roads. But for a splendid system of highways, which permitted an easy means of communication with all parts of her domains, she never could have reached the heights she attained, either in commerce or war. —Youth’s Companion.