acrossasiaminoro00chiluoft

:
178 ACROSS ASIA MINOR ON FOOT
Asia Miuor. You can recognise in these old ways
roads ancient, roads merely medieval, roads of still
later date, and see the process which has made them
being continued now on the very road by which you
travel. Some of these ancient highways are sunk
ten, fifteen, twenty feet in the soft rock, and are immemorial
monuments ; for they have been excavated
by the wear of traffic through centuries — perhaps
through more than a score of centuries. Each hollow
way is roughly an inverted semicircle in section. In
the bottom are always two deep narrow parallel
channels, formed by the wheels of vehicles. Between
a blunt ridge wdth a shallow depression along
them is
the middle — beaten out by the feet of men and
animals. Because wheels cut faster than feet the
wheel tracks sink in time till axles strike the central
ridge, and the road becomes impassable to vehicles.
At this stage, on important roads, the ridges and
perhaps the sides also eeem to have been broken
down, and the process of wear w^ent on again, followed
indefinitely by more breaking down and wear.
While I stood looking at one of these deep roads,
the process was illustrated under my eyes. A loaded
bullock-cart came along with its axle just clearing
the ridge. The driver walked in front, and seeing
a slight projection that he thought would obstruct
his cart, broke it off with a heavy stone. But
farther on, where a projection appeared too great
for that method, he dropped pieces of stone into
the ruts and so raised the wheels. In fact, one
may suppose that in earlier and busier days the
ruts had been filled up from time to time, and the
wheels so enabled by change of track to do nearly
all the excavating which has taken place. The
parallel roads were examples of another process, and
came about where sufficient lateral space existed
when the ruts grew too deep for wheels, the old
road was abandoned, and traffic took a new course
beside it.