FAC-SIMILE OF INDIAN INK DRAWING BY BRUCE.
HENRY S. KING Co. LONDON.
This curious piece of sculpture is still visible in the foundations of the old bridge, though time has worn out the look of scorn in the good lady’s face.
Bruce was the next traveller who describes it, and his is the most interesting of all, because it is pictorial. He has left two drawings—one ([Pl. IV.]), a beautiful and artistic sketch in Indian ink, which I have chosen for reproduction, and the other, a highly-finished drawing with figures by Balugani, intended, no doubt, for presentation to the King. He says:—
The view of it is in the King’s collection; a band of robbers, the figures which adorn it, is a composition from imagination, all the rest is perfectly real.
There can be no doubt whatever of the extreme accuracy of Bruce’s drawings when unadorned by Balugani. This one, therefore, has an exceptional interest, as it shows the condition of the bridge before its restoration by Salah Bey; it is the only sketch extant of the ancient structure.
In 1792, Salah Bey caused it to be restored by Don Bartolomeo, an architect from Port Mahon, in the Balearic Islands, who rebuilt the upper part, the two lower arches and the three piers which sustained them being in a perfectly sound condition.
He commenced to obtain his stone from Mahon, but that proving too costly, he made use of such as he found on the plateau of Mansourah, and especially of the triumphal arch, which the Arabs called Kasr el-Ghoula, the fortress of the Ogress, a name familiar to every reader of ‘The Thousand and One Nights.’
Admirably executed illustrations of the bridge thus restored, as it existed after the conquest of Constantine, are given by MM. Ravoisier and De la Marre.[29]
A curious document was found by Monsieur Feraud amongst the papers of the family of Kadi Si Moustafa ben Djelloul, one of whose ancestors was secretary to Salah Bey, relative to the restoration of the bridge by Don Bartolomeo.[30] The translation is as follows:—