The Placer herald., 1858-09-04
Victoria Bridge at Montreal


Bridge at Montreal, for the Grand Trunk
Railway, will be read with interest. This
bridge is not much more than half finished
and has already cost more than three mil
lions of dollars:
The description of what this Victoria
Bridge is, is not one for figures either for
height or length or of simiitude. The work
is the advancing, progressing, resisting, sub
DUNG power of the human hand, its course
defined by the human intelect.-Ihe prep
aration for the erection was enormous. 1t
was no narrow strait like the Menai, no quiet
placid stream as the Hudson, no easy breadth
like the Thames, over which this way for the
locomotive was to be thrown, but the giant
s. Seas ts sacn IS yyperof fe 81 Ja 5 Wfessive W
river taught in the gorge of the Niagara to
all the lessons of the rapids and its educa-
ton not forgotten, wild and savage current,
and over this an iron road of a mile and a
quarters length was to be placed.
And while the unending rush of the open
water was an obstacle tlia. seemed to defy
the labor of art, it was in the farewell of
Winter, when the ice of a climate such as
this, formed above in the La Praire basin,
widening Of the river, just below Lachine,
when thus taken up in a mass by the accu
mutation of the fragments that are broken
in the decent of the lapids at Lachine, comes
down riding the terrible current like the de-
stroyer, that structure Of mans work must
be mighty, the binding together of wood, the
timber ever SO heavy, and the knitting to-
gether like the ntricacies Of canebreak,
which would endure before this descending
attack. This must be encountered, and the
commerce of the river must be respected
Ii gh up above smoke pipe and spar, and
what is most above all, above the swollen
flood of the Spring. must the bridge be pla-
ced. 1t was to work like this that Mr. Ross
summoned his energies, and the result of his
skill is already in our sight.
A long causeway of earth and stone is
first built, reaching far out into the river
very broad, and with its side at such slope
as to make the advance of the ice gradual.
This embankment is great work in itself,
and is only forgotten in the next step. In
the river "a piers are to be built. If it was
all in prediction, think the tourist would
smile at the wild promises of the engineer
as at the day dream Of the enthusiast. Out
of these piers, these foundations for the
bridge, sixteen are built and four in progress,
leaving four for the ensuing year. There
they stand, like sentinel towers, like vast
fragments of an enormous wall, 10000 tuns
in weight! 90 feet in length at their base,
and so angled that the crushing ice gides up
the slope, and, broken at the top, falls in a
huge cataract of massive blocks on either
side. In the last Spring the ice piled to
their full height and went over. These
stones, where they meet the first shock Of
the ice, are smothed and bolted with great
irons, themselves cinched by plates. They
throw aside the ice Of the Spring, which, al
though it formed late, was very massive, and
they stand as near the invulnerable as hu-
man hand can construct
am glad to have seen them in this un-
finished condition, for arch of the Roman
age cannot furnish more of the beauty of the
gracefuEwith the ponderous than these great
structures sentineling this mighty river. Al
each end Of the bridge tube is securely
placed, and just judgment of the bridge
can be found in an examination Of these.
presume the idea of most Of US concerning
a tube to be used as bridge is that Of {
round one, like the tube Of telescope, ar
enormous iron cylinder. The reality is, tha
they approach the square-not entirely so
but with sides Of height greater than th'
breadth Of top and bottom; the iron Of th'
bottom thickened at the extremities, that o
the top made strongest at the center, to re
sist alike compression and elongation. Th'
effects Of heat and frost are foreseen, ant
the sunshine is given room sufficient for it
daily sport with the metal by the use o
rollers. Thoroughly painted, with its rivet
in line, its ridges at intervals, close and Sc
cure, it seems like long saloon. As for it
capacity to bear the burden Of the locomo