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Updated: June 27, 2025
A mournful and inextricable dilemma! Perhaps one or two of such visionaries, who are made of sterner stuff, have deliberately embarked, hopefully and courageously, upon the Pardiggle path; they have tried absurd experiments, like Ruskin, in road-making and the formation of Guilds; they have taken to journalism and committees like William Morris. But they have been baffled.
All was hurry and preparation at "the Lodge," until the anticipated arrival of the "Barnstaple Sociable," one morning at the door, summoned the ambitious pair, and on the fourth day of their departure from Devonshire, they were duly set down at the White Horse Cellar, for road-making had not then received the magic touch of Macadam.
The business of contractor had not yet come into existence, nor was the art of road-making much understood; and in a remote country place such as Knaresborough the surveyor had some difficulty in finding persons capable of executing the necessary work.
It seems that the first 400 kilometres, in the hilly region near the seaboard, cost 75,000,000 francs in place of the 25,000,000 francs first estimated . Road-making has also been pushed on in many directions. A flotilla of steamers plies on the great river and its chief affluents. In 1885 there were but five; the number now exceeds a hundred. As many as 1532 kilometres of telegraphs are now open.
On Sunday morning we had English service and a sermon, the congregation being augmented by the only other English people a man from Australia who is here road-making, and his wife; and in the afternoon, disregarding a temperature of 85 degrees, we went through the Chinese village of Serambang.
It was not until two o'clock that I could conclude my correspondence with the road-making, land-measuring world, and join a very agreeable party, assembled by my friend Rankin, to partake of an early dinner and witness my departure. Mr. Rankin accompanied me in my ride that afternoon, and we reached at a late hour the house of Charley Booth, distant about 25 miles from Bathurst.
For weeks the whole available strength of the Expedition f had been employed in road-making and in hauling the boats up the rapids of the Kaministiquia River, and it was only on the 16th of July, after seven weeks of unremitting toil and arduous labour, that all these preliminary difficulties had been finally overcome and the leading detachments of boats set out upon their long and perilous journey into the wilderness.
The population of the island at that time was 192 souls, all Europeans, except 40 liberated Africans, and they were then deficient of 10: the Government having allowed the number of 50 to assist in carrying on the required improvements and other employments, which consists of road-making, erecting buildings, gardening, conveying water, &c. &c.
As for the masonry work, we could break out our stone on the site itself; there was layer on layer of granite there. By noon next day we were hard at work, Lars Falkenberg digging the trench for the pipe-line, Grindhusen and I getting stone. We were both well used to this work from the days when we had been road-making together at Skreia. Well and good. We worked four days; then it was Sunday.
Lord Colambre listened with all possible composure and attention; but the postilion, having now made his linchpin of wood, and fixed himself, he mounted his bar, and drove on, saying to Lord Colambre, as he looked at the road-makers, "Poor cratures! They couldn't keep their cattle out of pound, or themselves out of jail, but by making this road." "Is road-making, then, a very profitable business!
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