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Show formed marking the trail," and where there was not a ridge or berm, "the trail is 199 free from the rock debris which occurs on either side." More than a thousand years ago, Mexican roads had surfaces of flagstone, some ten to forty-five feet wide. Older, three foot wide trails seem to have been simply the product of wear. Mayan roads were marvelous feats of architectural achievement. Thomas W. F. Gann described one in a work published in 1925: 200 About two leagues from San Juan del Chen . . . (we) struck what the guide had told us about . . . a great elevated road, or causeway 32 ft. wide, and varying, according to the configuration of the ground from 2 to 8 ft. in height . . . . This was probably one of the most remarkable roads ever constructed, as the sides were built of great blocks of cut stone, many weighing hundreds of pounds; the central part was filled in with unhewn blocks of limestone, and the top covered with rubble, which, as is indicated by the traces of it which remain here and there, was once cemented over. It was convex, being higher in the centre than either side, and ran, as far as we followed it, straight as an arrow and almost flat as a rule. This was one of sixteen such roads of which the longest was over sixty miles, some of which had bridges over swampy areas. In South America the Incas had a system of 10,000 miles of paved roads. . , 201 John Howland Rowe said: 199. Ibid. 200. Gann, Thomas W. F. Mystery Cities, Duckworth, London, 1925, p. 303, as quoted in Robertson, op_. cit. 201. Rowe, John Howland "Inca Culture at the Time of the Spanish Conquest," Bulletin 143 of the Bureau of American Ethnology, 1946, p. 229, as quoted in Robertson, og. cit. - 134 - |
