Page:Brinkley - China - Volume 2.djvu/48

over dirt-heaps which have been formed by refuse thrown from the town over the edge of the stone enbankment. In the loess regions of Shansi Province even such restorations as would have compensated the action of the wind have been neglected, so that the surface, pulverised by traffic, having been gradually blown away, the roads have ultimately been converted into immense ruts running at a depth of from fifteen to twenty feet below the level of the surrounding country. It has been justly said of some of the highways of China that, as examples of engineering skill and magnificent labour, they probably equalled, when new, the best efforts of the Romans in the same line. To believe that dictum is less difficult than to conceive any racial affinity between the men that planned and executed these fine works and the men that have suffered them to fall into ruin and decay. The Grand Canal, in itself a triumph of engineering skill and imperial enterprise, has shared the fate of the roads: both have become well nigh useless through neglect. It is not that the Chinaman's appreciation of comfortable travel and economical traffic is naturally defective, though the habit of suffering may have blunted it. The more credible explanation is that, owing to the division of society into family groups each entirely absorbed in its own welfare, public spirit has almost ceased to be operative, and combined effort for such an object as road-repairing is out of the question. There is in Peking a Board of