The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Edgar Allan Poe [802]
The Roman road (and our own quadrangular stone-block pavement is but a weak imitation of it) is beyond doubt exceedingly durable; and, so far, wherever the experiment has been tried, it has fully succeeded. By so far we mean so far as concerns durability. The objections are first, its cost, which is very great when the proper material is employed; and secondly the street din which is wrought by the necessity of having the upper surfaces of the blocks roughened, to afford a hold for the hoof. The noise from these roughened stones is less, certainly, than the tintamarre proceeding from the round ones — but nevertheless is intolerable still. The first objection (cost) is trivial where funds are at command; for in the end this species of pavement is the cheapest which has ever been invented, or probably ever will be invented — for repairs are scarcely needed at all. But it is cheap only in a save-at-the spigot understanding of the term — for our second objection is one of a vital importance. The loss of time (not to mention temper) through the insufferable nuisance of street-noise in many of our most frequented thoroughfares, would overwhelm all reasonable people with astonishment if but once fairly and mathematically put; and that time is money — to an American at least — is a proposition not for an instant to be disputed. Nor have we dwelt upon the vast inconvenience, and often fatal injury resulting to invalids from the nuisance of which we complain — and of which all classes complain, without ever mentioning the necessity of getting it abated.
It is generally admitted, we believe, that as long as they last, the wooden pavements have the advantage over all others. They occasion little noise (we place this item first and are serious in so placing it as the most important consideration of all); they are kept clean with little labor; they save a great deal in horse power; they are pleasant to the hoof and thus save the health of the horse — as well as some twenty or thirty per cent. in the wear and tear of vehicles — and as much more, in time, to all travellers through the increased rapidity of passage to and fro.
The first objection is that of injury to the public health from miasmata arising from the wood. Whether such injury actually does occur is very questionable — but there is no need of mooting the question, since all admit that the source of miasma (decay) can be prevented. It is demonstrated that by the process very improperly called Kyanizing (since Kyan has not the slightest claim to the invention) even the greenest wood may be preserved for centuries, or if need be for a hundred, or far more. The experiments by which this effect is, as we say, demonstrated, have been tried in every variety of way, with nearly identical results. Blocks properly prepared, for example, were subjected for many years, in the fungus pit of the dockyard at Woolwich, England, to all the known decomposing agents which can ever naturally be brought to act against a wooden pavement, and yet were taken from the pit, at the close of the experiments, in as sound a condition as when originally deposited.
The preservative agent employed was that of corrosive sublimate — the Bi-Chloride of Mercury. Let a pound of the sublimate be dissolved in fifteen or sixteen gallons of water, and a piece of wood (not decayed) be immersed for seventy-two hours in the solution, and the wood cannot afterwards be rotted. An instantaneous mineralization can be effected, if necessary, by injection of the fluid in vacuo into the pores of the wood. It is rendered much heavier, and more brittle by the process, and has altogether a slightly metallic character.