The originators of many great reforms in law and religion, in working to establish principles applicable and needful to local issues, have thereby, unconsciously to themselves, established principles which have proved beneficial and applicable to the whole human race. In the stress of trying times we have discovered in the constitution of our country latent powers which its framers never dreamed were there. Thus it is with the humble occupation of road-building. A road constructed for the convenience of some primitive community or to gratify the caprice of some rich man or lordly ruler becomes often in after years an Appian Way for public travel and commercial intercourse. A road may be located in one of three ways. It may be laid out in a straight line by crossing lowlands in the mud and going over hills at steep grades. The ancient Britons, like the early settlers in this country, established their homesteads and villages on commanding situations, and ran their roads and bridle-paths in direct courses by their habitations. The Romans, possessors of great wealth and abundant slave-labor, built their military and public roads in direct lines from place to place, regardless of expense. In this way they shortened distances somewhat, but their roads must have been constructed at enormous expense in money and labor. Their roads were marvels of engineering skill and workmanship, which even now, after the lapse of eighteen centuries, impress every thoughtful observer with the idea that he is in the presence of the work of the immortals. They threw arched bridges of solid masonry over rivers and across ravines; they cut tunnels through mountains, and sometimes carried their roads underground for the sole purpose of shelter from the sun; they levelled heights and made deep cuts through hills; and when they came to a marsh they built a causeway high enough and strong enough to make it safe and dry at all seasons of the year. This mode of location is still followed in the Latin countries of Italy, France, and Spain, where many of the roads are identical with the old Roman roads.