This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1897 edition. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER XIII STREET-CLEANING IN EUROPE: A REPORT OF OBSERVATIONS MADE IN THE SUMMER OF 1896 VIENNA THE impression produced by the streets of Vienna on the newly arrived American is altogether favorable. The pavement is much more uniformly good than he sees at home. There is less asphalt than we have, but the granite blocks, which are almost universal, are very regular and are very closely laid. They are perfect cubes of about eight-inch size; their surfaces are flat and their edges are sharp. As they are stacked in the depot, a dozen rows high and in piles some fifty feet long, they lie almost as close and true to line as so many pressed bricks. In the streets they are laid, on a true foundation of concrete, in diagonal rows, the lines of their opposite corners running straight across from curb to curb. The surface is as nearly flat as the need for drainage will allow--much flatter than with us. I should say that on a roadway twenty-five feet wide the middle is not more than two inches higher than the edge, and there is no perceptible deviation from a true surface either crosswise or lengthwise of the street. The joints between the blocks do not average more than a quarter of an inch. The material is hard, but it seems not to become slippery after years of use. The asphalt pavement is equally good, and both are on the average decidedly better than with us. The curbstones are heavier and lower, and the sidewalks are very carefully laid-- often with the same blocks as the streets. The tracks of the street-railroads are grooved rails, somewhat like those on Broadway, but they are heavier, and the two sides of the rail are equally high and equally broad. The groove in which the flange of the wheel runs is narrower than the narrowest...