More than two years elapsed before the bridge was replaced by the present elegant structure, whose airiness and grace more than reconcile us to the loss of its predecessor.
This new fabric is, we believe, the finest, if not the only, specimen of its kind in the United States. The plan is simple. Two square towers of solid granite, thirty-two feet in height, are built on either abutment. Over each of these towers, on iron rollers, pass five wire cables, each cable being composed of two hundred and sixty strands, each strand being an eighth or an inch thick. The length of each cable is six hundred and fifty feet. These cables are secured, on each shore, in pits, distant from the towers one hundred feet, and continuing under ground fifty feet further, to a point where they are securely fastened at the depth of thirty feet. These pits are built over so as to exclude the rain, but not the air; and the cables, being painted, are thus preserved from rust. The cables, in stretching from tower to tower, form a curve, the lowest point of which is at the centre of the bridge. The causeway is of wood, and hangs, by smaller wire cables, from these larger ones. The width of the bridge is twenty-seven feet, and its length, from abutment to abutment, three hundred and forty-three feet. The strength of the bridge has been tested by a weight of seventy tons. The structure is painted white throughout, and has already won the name of the most graceful bridge in the country.
Painted by Sir T. Lawrence Eng’d by H.S. Sadd, N.Y.
Engraved Expressly for Graham’s Magazine.
THE SCIENCE OF KISSING!!
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THE AFTER-DINNER TALK OF JEREMY SHORT, ESQ.