The Philippines: Past and Present (Volume 2 of 2)Worcester, Dean C. (Dean Conant)
History
The Philippines: Past and Present (Volume 2 of 2)
Worcester, Dean C. (Dean Conant)
Philippines; Philippines -- History -- 1898-1946
The enormous change which road construction has produced in ease of
travel, and in reduced cost of transporting farm products, cannot be
appreciated by one unfamiliar with conditions in Spanish days. Then
the ordinary country road was a narrow ditch sloping in on both sides
toward the bottom, this condition being brought about by failure to
provide proper drainage so that there was tremendous erosion during the
rainy season, at which time these so-called roads became converted into
deep quagmires by the action of very narrow-tired solid wooden cart
wheels, most of which were fixed upon their axles. It was not unusual
to see carts in mud up to their bodies, seeming to float on it while
being pulled by floundering carabaos. Many of the roads were so bad
that wheeled vehicles could not be used even during the dry season,
and their place was taken by so-called cangas, or bamboo sledges, which
also caused rapid road destruction. When all else failed, the Filipino
mounted his faithful carabao, which could swim the unbridged streams
if the current was not too swift, and could successfully negotiate
deep quagmires, and thus he journeyed from place to place, leaving
the transportation of his products until the coming of the dry season.
The use on improved roads of cangas, and of carts with narrow-tired
wheels or with wheels fixed on their axles, is now forbidden by
law. The carts permitted to be used have broad tires that help to
smooth the roads instead of cutting them to pieces.
As already stated, this road system is supplemented in the wilder
parts of the archipelago, so far at least as the special government
provinces are concerned, by a trail system which is rapidly being
extended. The trails, which are at first built only wide enough to
permit the passage of horses, are on grades such that they can be
converted into roads by widening and surfacing, and are gradually
widened in connection with the maintenance work so as to permit the
passage, first of narrow-tired carts, and later of carts of ordinary
width. Indeed one such trail extending from Baguio, in Benguet, to
Naguilian, in the lowlands of the neighbouring province of Union,
has already been sufficiently widened to permit the passage of
automobiles, and the same thing can be done with any of the others
when occasion requires.
It has been most interesting to note to what an extent the construction
of good roads and trails and the cultivation of the land in their
vicinity have gone hand in hand. The prosperity of the country has
been enormously increased by the carrying out of the present sensible
road policy for which Governor-General W. Cameron Forbes is primarily
responsible.
The policy of the Forbes administration contemplated the steady
continuance of road and bridge construction and maintenance until a
complete system, which had been carefully worked out for the entire
archipelago, should have been finished.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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