parts;
unavoidable though unwelcome visits, and other incidents arising from
their wild situation....

The standard breadth of these roads, as laid down at the first
projection, is sixteen feet; but in some parts, where there were no very
expensive difficulties, they are wider....

The old ways (for roads I shall not call them) consisted chiefly of
stony moors, bogs, rugged, rapid fords, declivities of hills, entangling
woods, and giddy precipices. You will say this is a dreadful catalogue
to be read to him that is about to take a Highland journey. I have not
mentioned the valleys, for they are few in number, far divided asunder,
and generally the roads through them were easily made.

My purpose now is to give you some account of the nature of the
particular parts above-mentioned, and the manner how this extraordinary
work has been executed; and this I shall do in the order I have ranged
them as above.

And first, the stony moors. These are mostly tracts of ground of several
miles in length, and often very high, with frequent lesser risings and
descents, and having for surface a mixture of stones and heath. The
stones are fixed in the earth, being very large and unequal, and
generally are as deep in the ground as they appear above it; and where
there are any spaces between the stones, there is a loose spongy sward,
perhaps not above five or six inches deep, and incapable to produce any
thing but heath, and all beneath it is hard gravel or rock....

Here the workmen first made room to fix their instruments, and then, by
strength, and the help of those two mechanic powers, the screw and the
lever, they raised out of their ancient beds those massive bodies, and
then filling up the cavities with gravel, set them up, mostly end-ways,
along the sides of the road, as directions in time of deep snows, being
some of them, as they now stand, eight or nine feet high. They serve,
likewise, as memorials of the skill and labour requisite to the
performance of so difficult a work....

Now that I have no further occasion for any distinction, I shall call
every soft place a bog, except there be occasion sometimes to vary the
phrase.

When one of these bogs has crossed the way on a stony moor, there the
loose ground has been dug out down to the gravel, or rock, and the
hollow filled up in the manner following, viz.--

First with a layer of large stones, then a smaller size, to fill up the
gaps and raise the causeway higher; an