In several interviews with your commission week before last, I pointed out to you some of the serious mistakes which had been made in the laying out and construction of the road up the mountain.

Justice to the purposes which led you to employ me require however that I should more distinctly take the occasion which this experience offers to urge you to establish certain conditions which a much more extended experience that I have elsewhere had convinces me are not only necessary to make my services of any real value to you but indispensable to an economical managment of your work.

I therefore ask your special consideration of certain facts, as follows:

1st  That in what has thus far been done the drawings and the written advice given in and accompanying my report to your Board and the extended written and verbal instructions given your Engineer have been practically lost sight of and all the study which I had given to them wasted.

2d  That so far as any comprehensive plan has been had in the work done, it is one of a radically different character from that which I supplied you, the great majority of the objects I had studied to effect being carefully avoided & the results which I studied to avoid being in many instances pursued as if desirable.

[202]

3rd  The superintendent of the work who was not under the orders of the Engineer and who varied at pleasure from his advice did not during the progress of the work ever see my report to you, nor had he been informed in any manner of the most essential instructions which I had prepared for the work.

4th  The engineer occasionally employd, (apparently only to indicate the general course of the road & give levels), never read my detailed instructions, never saw the detailed drawings & denied all responsibility for the plan which was followed, many of the simply engineering errors of which he was nevertheless aware of but had no power to prevent.

5th  Neither the Superintendent nor the Engineer nor again your secretary was able to refer when required to my drawings or written instructions, or to copies of them nor upon search were they to be found distinctly in the custody of anyone of them; two papers among them being particularly called for could not be found and I am informed that it is necessary that I should reproduce them.

6th  You have principally as the result of the undefined responsibilities and insubordination which these facts exemplify, a road such as, (the lowest & the highest point being given & the maximum grade being fixed) any boy who had been a year with a surveying party might have laid out & any intelligent farmer might have constructed, in which a great deal of costly material has been unnecessarily used and which nevertheless will require you to obtain from other sources a much larger amount of this same material than if any well considered plan had been followed would have been necessary.

Whatever beauty you enjoy in going over it exists simply in spite of the work that has been done, not in the least because of it — and opportunity of making such an attractive way up the mountain as I had designed, has been lost forever.

The injury which I must inevitably suffer from being supposed to be the designer of a work of which any tyro in my profession would be ashamed, and for which it is wholly out of your power to make me a compensation, could never have occurred had the work been under the Superintendence, as you had led me to understand that it would be, of a man, however little qualified by previous training for it, who would be influenced in the least degree by a sense of professional responsibility in the matter.

I put the case thus plainly before you, with no desire to reproach the Commission for a course which I know was followed with the best of motives, but as my justification for not only recommending on grounds of public interest but for earnestly requesting as a matter of simple justice to myself that you adopt some fundamental rules in the form of By Laws or otherwise so that they may not be too readily set aside, for guarding against similar waste in the future.

To this end I submit the following suggestions:

1st  That no construction shall be ordered or authorized until after [203] the Landscape Architect has had opportunity to report on it and his plans or recommendations have been distinctly adopted or distinctly rejected by the Commission.

2d  That an Engineer shall be appointed, to whom the adopted general plans and approved instructions of the Landscape Architect shall be given and who shall have such control over the work that he may secure conformity to the plans in its progress.

3d  That all orders of the Commission relating to construction work shall be issued to and through the Engineer [orders relating to police & maintenance work going directly to the Superintendent].

4th  That copies of all orders of the Commission relating to construction shall be furnished to the Landscape Architect.

5th  That as to matters of detail not defined by the general plans as adopted by the Commission the Engineer shall consult with and proceed under the instructions of the Landscape Architect.

6th  That as to deviations of detail from the general plans adopted by the Commission, which may be found by the Engineer to be desireable on account of conditions of topography not shown on the topographical map, he shall submit suggestions to the Landscape Architect. If approved by him the work shall proceed in accordance with such modifications except when they are of such a character that the cost of the work would be materially affected by them, in which case they shall first be submitted to and acted on by the Commission.

I am confident that the adoption of and rigid adherance to such a routine as would thus be prescribed, whatever its immediate inconvenience, would in the end lead to results much more satisfactory to the Commission than can be otherwise attained and that the course of proceeding thus suggested is essential to secure due value to the service which I am engaged to render.