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increased in number and quality. There was an awakened interest in better overland travel, better protection of merchants and other travelers, and the improvement of roads. Public funds, chiefly derived from tolls, were committed to road upkeep. The corvée, or road-labour tax, made an even more substantial contribution. Long-distance overland commerce increased rapidly and included a restoration of the trade route between Europe and China through Central Asia that Marco Polo traveled in the late 13th century.

South America

Across the Atlantic, the period witnessed the rise of another notable road-building empire, that of the Incas. The Inca road system extended from Quito, Ecuador, through Cuzco, Peru, and as far south as Santiago, Chile. It included two parallel roadways, one along the coast about 2,250 miles in length, the other following the Andes about 3,400 miles in length with a number of cross connections. At its zenith, when the Spaniards arrived early in the 16th century, a network of some 14,000 miles of road served an area of about 750,000 square miles (1,940,000 square kilometres) in which lived nearly 10 million people. The network was praised by 16th-century explorers as superior to that in contemporary Europe.

The Andes route was remarkable. The roadway was 25 feet wide and traversed the loftiest ranges. It included galleries cut into solid rock and retaining walls built up for hundreds of feet to support the roadway. Ravines and chasms were filled with solid masonry, suspension bridges with wool or fibre cables crossed the wider mountain streams, and stone surfacing was used in difficult areas. The steeper gradients were surmounted by steps cut in the rocks. Traffic consisted entirely of pack animals (llamas) and people on foot; the Inca lacked the wheel. Yet they operated a swift foot courier system and a visual signaling system along the roadway from watchtower to watchtower.

26. There can be some mistakes in the statements. Correct them.

1.In the early Christian era the system of roads was used for trade.

2.Road revival was connected with the necessity to link the Baltic and the Middle East.

3.Long-distance overland commerce influenced the road maintenance in the 15th century.

4.The Inca road system could hardly be called as superior to that in contemporary Europe.

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5.Galleries of the Andes route supported the roadway.

6.Gorges were crossed with suspension bridges.

7.Wheeled vehicles increased in number and quality in South America in the Middle Ages.

27. Discuss the questions with your partner:

1.When did the first signs of a road revival come in Europe and Asia?

2.What was further road revival aided by?

3.How were the roads maintained that time?

4.What roadways did the Inca road system incorporate?

5.What was the width of the Andes route?

6.What were the retaining walls used for?

7.What facts about European, Asian, American roads were absolutely new for you?

28. Do you know how many kilometers one mile is equal to? How many centimeters is one foot equal to? Write down the length of each road into the chart.

29. On the map (Pic. 3) label the countries where the roads you have read about are situated.

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is nearly straight, despite the steep grades of the Alban Hills and the swamps of the Pontine Marshes. Near Rome the road was lined with tombs, of which the ruins of many can still be seen. Parts of the road are still in use.

The Appian Way was the first long road built specifically to transport troops outside the smaller region of greater Rome (this was essential to the Romans). The few roads outside the early city were Etruscan and went mainly to Etruria. By the late Republic, the Romans had expanded over most of Italy and were masters of road construction. Their roads began at Rome, where the master itinerarium, or list of destinations along the roads, was located, and extended to the borders of their domain – hence the expression, “All roads lead to Rome”.

Silk Road

Silk Road is the most important premodern trade route linking China, Central Asia, Persia and western Asia, and Europe. A 19th-century German scholar named the network of trails the Silk Road for the precious Chinese cloth that was originally the most valuable and abundant commodity transported on it. Although historians traditionally date the origin of the Silk Road to the 2nd century BC, a trickle of goods – principally jades, bronzes, and silks – was conveyed across Central Asia as early as about 1000 BC. Commerce persisted on the Silk Road until ocean-borne trade surpassed and superseded trade on the land route in the late 15th and early 16th centuries AD.

Although the economic significance of the Silk Road was limited, its cultural impact was great. As merchants, artisans, and missionaries traveled along the trade routes, they brought with them new products, ideas, technologies, and aesthetic principles. For example, in the late 2nd century AD, when the Han dynasty was declining and China was in chaos, the Chinese people found stability and comfort in a new religion introduced to them via Silk Road travelers. The religion, Buddhism, had originated in northern India in the 6th century BC. It began to appear in Central Asian oases and towns, finally spreading into China in the 1st century AD. Buddhism greatly influenced not only the spiritual views of the Chinese but also their diets, funerary practices, knowledge of the outside world, and arts, as well as the economic structure of their society. The pagoda style in architecture, new designs and motifs in painting, and sculptures of the historical Buddha and other Buddhist figures contributed enormously to Chi-

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nese art. Spectacular Buddhist sculptures and paintings were produced in the Mogao caves of Dunhuang and in Kyzyl (in present-day southeastern Russia), two vital locations along the Silk Road.

Although the Silk Road no longer exists as a trade route, sites along its course remain important tourist destinations. These sites include the ancient trading metropolises of Samarqand, Bukhara, and Khiva, and the towns of Dunhuang, Kashi, and Turpan, with their artistic and architectural treasures.

32. Scan the text (Ex. 33). Can you guess who and what these men are?

33. Read, translate and give the title to the text.

In Europe, gradual technological improvements in the 17th and 18th centuries saw increased commercial travel, improved vehicles, and the breeding of better horses. These factors created an incessant demand for better roads, and supply and invention both rose to meet that demand. In 1585 the Italian engineer Guido Toglietta wrote a thoughtful treatise on a pavement system using broken stone that represented a marked advance on the heavy Roman style. In 1607 Thomas Procter published the first Eng- lish-language book on roads. The first highway engineering school in Europe, the School of Bridges and Highways, was founded in Paris in 1747.

Up to this time roads had been built, with minor modifications, to the heavy Roman cross section, but in the last half of the 18th century the fa-

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thers of modern road building and road maintenance appeared in France and Britain.

In France in 1764, Pierre-Marie-Jérôme Trésaguet, an engineer from an engineering family, became engineer of bridges and roads at Limoges and, in 1775, inspector general of roads and bridges for France. In that year he developed an entirely new type of relatively light road surface, based on the theory that the underlying natural formation, rather than the pavement, should support the load. His standard cross section, 18 feet wide, consisted of an eight-inch-thick course of uniform foundation stones laid edgewise on the natural formation and covered by a two-inch layer of walnut-sized broken stone. This second layer was topped with a one-inch layer of smaller gravel or broken stone. In order to maintain surface levels, Trésaguet’s pavement was placed in an excavated trench – a technique that made drainage a difficult problem.

Thomas Telford, born of poor parents in Dumfriesshire, in Scotland, in 1757, was apprenticed to a stone mason; intelligent and ambitious, he progressed to designing bridges and building roads. Telford placed great emphasis on two features: (1) maintaining a level roadway with a maximum gradient of 1 in 30 and (2) building a stone surface capable of carrying the heaviest anticipated loads. His roadways were 18 feet wide and built in three courses: (1) a lower layer, seven inches thick, consisting of goodquality foundation stone carefully placed by hand (this was known as the Telford base), (2) a middle layer, also seven inches thick, consisting of broken stone of two-inch maximum size, and (3) a top layer of gravel or broken stone up to one inch thick.

The greatest advance came from John Loudon McAdam, born in 1756 at Ayr in Scotland. McAdam began his road-building career in 1787 but reached major heights after 1804, when he was appointed general surveyor for Bristol, then the most important port city in England. The roads leading to Bristol were in poor condition, and in 1816 McAdam took control of the Bristol Turnpike. There he showed that traffic could be supported by a relatively thin layer of small, single-sized, angular pieces of broken stone placed and compacted on a well-drained natural formation and covered by an impermeable surface of smaller stones. He had no use for the masonry constructions of his predecessors and contemporaries.

Drainage was essential to the success of McAdam’s method, and he required the pavement to be elevated above the surrounding surface. The structural layer of broken stone was eight inches thick and used stone of two to three inches maximum size laid in layers and compacted by traffic –

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a process adequate for the traffic of the time. The top layer was two inches thick, using three-quarter- to one-inch stone to fill surface voids between the large stones. Continuing maintenance was essential.

Although McAdam drew on the successes and failures of others, his total structural reliance on broken stone represented the largest paradigm shift in the history of road pavements. The principles of the “macadam” road are still used today. McAdam’s success was also due to his efficient administration and his strong view that road managers needed skill and motivation.

34. Listen to the words repeat them and try to memorize:

demand – спрос invention – изобретение inspector general – ревизор

road surface – поверхность дороги, дорожное покрытие support – поддерживать

cross section – поперечное сечение broken stone – щебень

stone mason – каменщик condition – состояние compact – уплотнять void – пора, пустота

35. There are 27 words from the text. Find them and read out the sentences.

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T 1 E I D M C R Q T E C H N O L O G I C A L 2 N V F A O K O I N M Y V M C O L T C X K 3 G A G I N D R A M L M L D T Y K A K N T 4 L Y A W T V I E D P V A E E H Z L D S H 5 I L I D E I L F N - E H N A M F I Y B R 6 S C M M M L C K I G B R I A D A A Z L E

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36. Write the answers on a separate sheet of paper. Exchange your papers with the partner. Check the answers.

1.Where did the fathers of modern road building live?

2.What is the Telford base?

3.What are principles of “macadam” road?

4.What is a new type of road surface developed by Trésaguet?

37. Which cross section of the road (A, B, C) was developed by Pierre- Marie-Jérôme Trésaguet, Thomas Telford and John Loudon McAdam? Label the road layers, showing the width of each layer.

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Christopher Columbus is rumored to have sighted Saba on November 13, 1493, but did not land. The island was first colonized in 1640 by the Dutch.

Through the 17th and 18th centuries its major industries were sugar and rum, and later fishing. In 1818 the Dutch took possession of Saba.

Saba Lace (also known as “Spanish work”) was a major export of Saba. In the 1870s, a young Mary Gertrude Hassell Johnson was sent to a Caracas convent for study – there she learned the craft. The lacework spread through the island. Ladies would copy addresses of businesses from shipping containers from the United States, and write to the employees. Often they would get orders for the lacework, and it started a considerable cottage industry.

There is one road, called simply “The Road”. Its construction was masterminded by Josephus Lambert Hassell who, despite the common opinion of Dutch and Swiss engineers, believed that a road could be built. He took a correspondence course in civil engineering, and started building the road with a crew of locals in 1938. After five years of work the first section of the road, from Fort Bay to The Bottom, was completed. It wasn’t however until 1947 that the first motor vehicle arrived. In 1951 the road to Windwardside and St. Johns was opened, and in 1958 the road was completed entirely.

Driving the road is considered to be a daunting occasion, and the curves in Windwardside are extremely difficult.

The island of Saba is known today for tourism and outstanding scuba diving. There are very few anchorages, and a small airport with service from Saint Martin. There is also a ferry departing from Saint Martin.

Saba is known as the "Unspoiled Queen". Like the Dutch side of Saint Martin, the island is spotlessly clean.

http://www.fact-archive.com/encyclopedia/Saba

40.Read the text and say about:

a)the first scientists who worked out the main principles of road design;

b)the importance of motor-highways.

Automobile Transport

Transport communication of the national economy of our country is ensured by the system of several kinds of transportation: transportation by rail, water, air and motor transportation. Transport is entrusted with a very

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