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Scene 40 This webpage reproduces a section of A Description of the Trajan Column by John Hungerford Pollen printed by George E. Eyre and William Spottiswoode, printers to Queen Victoria London, 1874 Text and engravings are in the public domain. Any color photographs are © William P. Thayer 1997- Scene 42

(p139) XLI. Laying of a Road

The country is densely wooded. Soldiers are employed cutting the trees which are carefully laid together to form a road, such as are still known as "corduroy" roads in Canada.a Longitudinal sleepers are laid over and under these, and broken stones and concrete above the timber. The road lies along the Danube.

A woodcut represents this construction, Fig. 28 in the preface, p70.

Two small buildings covered with a roof of planks nailed to the wall plates and ridge beams below them are distinguishable in the forest. Two heads of spies or prisoners are stuck on spears besides one of the buildings, perhaps those of assassins mentioned in the introduction, p83.

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Thayer's Note:

a According to a page once found on Jeffrey Kopp's Chinook and Northwestern Jargon Pages (apparently now vanished): "A roadway formed of small logs laid side-by‑side, and named after the ribbed surface of the resulting roadway."

A good photograph of a corduroy road can be seen here.

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