e dew-drops in the very faces of the
passengers, or perhaps smiting their cheeks with their sharp-pointed
leaves.

The first view of the bridge is obtained half a mile from it at a turn
on the stage-road. It is revealed with the suddenness of an apparition.
Raised a hundred feet above the highest trees of the forest, and
relieved against the purple side of a distant mountain, a whitish-gray
arch is seen, in the effect of distance as perfect and clean-cut an arch
as its Egyptian inventor could have defined. The tops of trees are
waving in the interval, the upper half of which we only see, and the
stupendous arch that spans the upper air is relieved from the first
impression that it is man's masonry, the work of art, by the fifteen or
twenty feet of soil that it supports, in which trees and shrubbery are
firmly embedded,--the verdant crown and testimony of nature's great
work. And here we are divested of an imagination which we believe is
popular, that the bridge is merely a huge slab of rock thrown across a
chasm, or some such hasty and violent arrangement. It is no such thing.
The arch and whole interval are contained in one solid rock; the
average width of that which makes the bridge is eighty feet, and beyond
this the rock extends for a hundred feet or so in mural precipices,
divided by only a single fissure, that makes a natural pier on the upper
side of the bridge, and up which climb the hardy firs, ascending step by
step on the noble rock-work till they overshadow you.

This mighty rock, a single mass sunk in the earth's side, of which even
what appears is stupendous, is of the same geological character,--of
limestone covered to the depth of from four to six feet with alluvial
and clayey earth. The span of the arch runs from forty-five to sixty
feet wide, and its height to the under line is one hundred and
ninety-six feet, and to the head two hundred and fifteen feet. The form
of the arch approaches to the elliptical; the stage-road which passes
over the bridge runs from north to south, with an acclivity of
thirty-five degrees, and the arch is carried over on a diagonal
line,--the very line of all others the most difficult for the architect
to realize, and the one best calculated for picturesque effects. It is
the proportions of art in this wild, strange work of nature, its
adjustment in the very perfection of mechanical skill, its apparently
deliberate purpose, that create an interest the most curious and
though