Cities and Roads.
Rains, winds and frosts, in their sculpture of the earth have each taken the easiest course; in so doing they have incidentally marked out the best paths for human feet, have pointed to the best sites for the homes of men. The stresses of defence may rear a pueblo on the peak of a perpendicular cliff in New Mexico, but Paris and London, like Rome, must have all roads leading to their gates; and the easier and shorter these roads, the bigger and stronger the city will become. Where New York, Montreal, Chicago, and Pittsburg now stand, the Indians long ago had the wit to found goodly settlements. They knew, as well as their white successors, the advantages of paths readily traversed, and no longer than need be. In this regard there was an instructive contrast at the outset of railroad building in England. A leading engineer, who planned some of the earliest English railways, had strong mathematical prepossessions: he endeavored to join the terminals of his routes by lines as nearly straight as he could. George Stephenson, for his part, had no mathematical warp of any kind, but instead much sound sense; his lines followed the courses of rivers and valleys, and kept, as much as might be, to the chief indentations of the sea. His roads deviated a good deal from straightness, but they did so profitably; whereas the lines of his academic rival, disrespecting the hints and indications of nature, were much less gratifying from an investor’s point of view. If a traveler takes the New York Central and Hudson River Railroad from New York to Buffalo he goes north for 143 miles, to Albany, before he begins to travel westward at all. Yet this line, keeping as it does to the well-peopled levels of the Hudson and Mohawk Valleys and serving their succession of cities, towns, and villages, enjoys the best business, and makes better time between its terminals than any rival route, because it passes around instead of over its hills and mountains. By way of contrast we turn to the railroad map of Russia and observe how Moscow and St. Petersburg are joined by a line which follows the road which it is said that Peter the Great, with military exigencies in view, laid down with a pencil and ruler.
Deciduous cypress, Taxodium distichum.