I did not wait, however, to discuss the marvel, but accepted it as one of those mysteries of which this pilgrimage was already giving me examples, and of which more were to come--(wait till you hear about the brigand of Radicofani). I said to myself—
'When I get out of the Terre Majeure, and away from the strong and excellent government of the Republic, when I am lost in the Jura Hills to-morrow there will be no such wine as this.'
So I bought a quart of it, corked it up very tight, put it in my sack, and held it in store against the wineless places on the flanks of the hill called Terrible, where there are no soldiers, and where Swiss is the current language. Then I went on into the centre of the town.
As I passed over the old bridge into the market-place, where I proposed to lunch (the sun was terrible--it was close upon eleven), I saw them building parallel with that old bridge a new one to replace it. And the way they build a bridge in Belfort is so wonderfully simple, and yet so new, that it is well worth telling.
In most places when a bridge has to be made, there is an infinite pother and worry about building the piers, coffer-dams, and heaven knows what else. Some swing their bridges to avoid this trouble, and some try to throw an arch of one span from side to side. There are a thousand different tricks. In Belfort they simply wait until the water has run away. Then a great brigade of workmen run down into the dry bed of the river and dig the foundations feverishly, and begin building the piers in great haste. Soon the water comes back, but the piers are already above it, and the rest of the work is done from boats. This is absolutely true. Not only did I see the men in the bed of the river, but a man whom I asked told me that it seemed to him the most natural way to build bridges, and doubted if they were ever made in any other fashion.
There is also in Belfort a great lion carved in rock to commemorate the siege of 1870. This lion is part of the precipice under the castle, and is of enormous size--- how large I do not know, but I saw that a man looked quite small by one of his paws. The precipice was first smoothed like a stone slab or tablet, and
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THE SAD ECONOMISTS
then this lion was carved into and out of it in high relief by Bartholdi, the same man that made the statue of Liberty in New York Harbour.