one road twisting to its ascent. Some idea of
the skill and science required to engineer it may be gathered by
looking into the tangled wilderness and rocky roughness that lie still
each side the way. Through such a gnarled, knotted, interlaced jungle
of big trees and little trees, and all manner of tangled twining
undergrowths, lining the sides of precipices, or hanging with bare
roots over them, concealing dangers till the shuddering soul almost
plunges into them, the road-men carefully and painfully sought and
fought their way. Up on rocky heights it was comparatively easy, for,
as one very expressively phrased it, every stone which they pried up
left a hole and made a hole. The stone wrenched from above rolled
below, and go lowered the height and raised the depth, and constantly
tended to levelness. Besides, there were no huge tree-trunks to be
extracted from the unwilling jaws of the mountain by forest-dentists,
with much sweat and toil and pain of dentist if not of jaws. Since,
also, the rise of one foot in six was considered as great as was
compatible with the well-being and well-doing of horses, whenever the
way came upon a knob or a breastwork that refused to be brought down
within the orthodox dimensions, it must turn. If the knob would not
yield, the way must, and, in consequence, its lengthened bitterness is
long drawn out. A line that continually doubles on itself is naturally
longer than one which goes straight to the mark. Mount Washington is
little more than a mile high; the road that creeps up its surly sides
is eight miles long. Frost and freshet are constant foes; the one
heaves and cracks, and the other tears down through the cracks to
undermine and destroy. Twenty-seven new culverts, we were told, had
been made, within the space of a mile and a half, since last year; and
these culverts are no child's play, but durable works,--aqueducts lined
with stone and bridged with plank, large enough for a man to pass
through with a wheelbarrow, and laid diagonally across the road, so
that the torrents pouring down the gutter shall not have to turn a
right angle, which they would gladly evade doing, but a very obtuse
one, which they cannot in conscience refuse; and, as the road all the
way is built a little higher on the precipice side than on the mountain
side, the water naturally runs into the gutter on that side, and so is
easily beguiled into leaving the road, which it would delight to
destroy, and