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In the early stages of the battle all water for the troops had to be brought up by mules, and likewise all food, ammunition and medical supplies, until the Engineers could get to work with road-building on the left bank of the river. The Bainsizza Plateau itself, lying amid a mass of barren mountains, contains woods, pastures, springs, small villages, a few roads and many tracks.
The Italians have been fortunate in having an inexhaustible supply of road-building material close at hand, for the mountains are solid road metal and in the plains one has only to scratch the soil to find gravel.
It was not the thrill of temperance fanaticism that stirred their hearts, but it was the memories of the old pioneer home in the wilderness; the rail-splitting, road-building days; the ancient rites of "raisings" and other neighborly ceremonies; when the farmer cut rye with a cradle, and threshed it out with his flail; when "butter and eggs were pin money" and wheat paid the store-keeper.
Good roads are possible in North Russia, but no one will ever build them until industrial development demands them or the area becomes thickly populated; that is, disregarding the possibility of future road-building for military operations.
On the night of the 19th, the battalion to which I belonged had just ended a tour of duty in the front line. We were to be relieved by another battalion of the 3rd Division of the Canadian Corps. There was but one road out, a road which at that time was considered a masterpiece of road-building. Three days had been allotted for its construction.
Labour on roads required by statute, whether shared equally by all settlers or allotted according to assessed property, proved little more successful. On the other hand, the system of provincial grants for road-building too often meant log-rolling and corruption, and in the Canadas it was discontinued after the establishment of municipal institutions in 1841.
In this fact we have another good suggestion for the school authorities at home, where it is said that proper knowledge and care would save the lives of a million infants a year. Hardly less important than the school work has been the road-building undertaken by the American officials.
I am more than ever impressed with the power of the co-operative movement, to effect a revolution in all industrial methods; especially, in travel and the transportation of farm products. Tell me, Fillmore! Do you think this road-building fever, will continue to spread with the growth of the movement?"
This great work, which was talked about years before it was undertaken, and then required years to finish, was a triumph of road-building, in which both owners and contractors took a pardonable pride; and to those familiar with the region through which it passed, the course will be sufficiently indicated by noting here and there a way-mark.
Four months of this passed, when, the reward having been raised to a thousand sticks, he was caught and sent back to New Georgia and the road-building gang. Now a thousand sticks are worth fifty dollars, and Mauki had to pay the reward himself, which required a year and eight months' labor. So Port Adams was now five years away.
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