engers,
and the remaining two for cable trams. The footway is eight feet higher
than the others, so that an uninterrupted view is gained from it. The
four cables supporting this heavy structure are anchored at both ends in
blocks of masonry weighing sixty thousand tons each; so that there is
little fear of their being dragged from their moorings. The bridge was
opened amid a blaze of fireworks on May 24th, 1883.

On May 7th, 1870, the tower on the riverside at Brooklyn was begun, and
completed just five years later; its companion on the opposite side was
a year behind it. The foundations of these great towers lie in solid
rock seventy-eight feet below the high-tide line on the New York side,
and only a little less on the Brooklyn side.

The towers once completed, the task of laying the cables across from
summit to summit engaged the thoughts of the engineers. This was no
ordinary case of swinging a steel rope across a river, for the gigantic
size and weight of the cables made it impossible to use ordinary means.
First of all it would be necessary to make a communication from tower to
tower. To accomplish this, one end of a coiled steel rope was carried to
the top of the Brooklyn tower and passed over until it dangled into the
river beneath. Here a steamboat dragged it across the river to the foot
of the New York tower, where it was hauled up, and having been passed
over the top, was carried down to the masonry anchorage already
mentioned. Here it was wound round a revolving drum or pulley, and
started back again to Brooklyn in the same manner, thus forming an
endless band along which material could be carried by revolving the
pulley at either end.

Though this rope was three-quarters of an inch in thickness, it was
almost invisible to the people on the river, two hundred and seventy-six
feet below. Yet it was the first 'stitch' in the great web, and
thousands of eyes were turned towards it on August 25th, 1876, when the
very first passenger crossed along it from shore to shore. This
passenger was Mr. Farrington, one of the engineers. He wished to
encourage his men by a good example, for over that terrible gulf it
would soon be necessary for many of them to go. His seat was a small
piece of board such as we use for a swing in a playground, and it was
attached to the wire by four short ropes. The perilous journey took more
than twenty minutes, and the people below watched almost breathlessly as
the slender thread swaye