But An Avalanche Or A Flood
Once Swept A Pine Into Position And Left It There; On This A
Genius, Who Was Doubtless Thought To Be Doing Something Very
Infamous, Ventured To Make Use Of It.
Another time a pine was
found nearly across the stream, but not quite, and not quite,
again, in the place where it was wanted.
A second genius, to the
horror of his fellow-tribesmen - who declared that this time the
world really would come to an end - shifted the pine a few feet so
as to bring it across the stream and into the place where it was
wanted. This man was the inventor of bridges - his family
repudiated him, and he came to a bad end. From this to cutting
down the pine and bringing it from some distance is an easy step.
To avoid detail, let us come to the old Roman horse road over the
Alps. The time between the shepherd's path and the Roman road is
probably short in comparison with that between the mere chamois
track and the first thing that can be called a path of men. From
the Roman we go on to the mediaeval road with more frequent stone
bridges, and from the mediaeval to the Napoleonic carriage road.
The close of the last century and the first quarter of this present
one was the great era for the making of carriage roads. Fifty
years have hardly passed and here we are already in the age of
tunnelling and railroads.
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