tful. The deep ravine over which it sweeps, and through which
traverses the beautiful Cedar Creek, is not otherwise easily passed for
several miles, either above or below the bridge. It is needful to the
spot, and yet so little likely to have survived the great fracture, the
evidences of which are visible around, and which has made a fissure of
about ninety feet through the breadth of a rock-ribbed hill, that we are
at first disposed to reflect upon it as the work of man. It is only when
we contemplate its full measure of grandeur that we are assured it
is the work of God. We have the pier, the arch, the studied angle of
ascent; and that nothing might be wanted in the evidences of design, the
bridge is guarded by a parapet of rocks, so covered with fine shrubs and
trees that a person travelling the stage-road running over it would, if
not informed of the curiosity, pass it unnoticed.

But let him approach through the foliage to the side. More than two
hundred feet below is the creek, apparently motionless, except where it
flashes with light as it breaks on an obstruction in the channel; there
are trees, attaining to grander heights as they ascend the face of the
pier; and far below this bed of verdure the majestic rock rises with the
decision of a wall, and the spectator shrinks from contemplating the
grand but cruel depths, and turns away with dizzy sensations. But the
most effective view is from the base of the bridge, where you descend by
a circuitous and romantic path. Even to escape from the hot sun into
these verdant and cool bottoms is of itself a luxury, and it prepares
you for the deliberate enjoyment of the scene. Everything reposes in the
most delightful shade, set off by the streaming rays of the sun, which
shoot across the head of the picture far above you, and sweeten with
softer touches the solitude below.

Standing by the rippling, gushing waters of the creek, and raising your
eyes to the arch, massive and yet light and beautiful from its height,
its elevation apparently increased by the narrowness of its piers and by
its projection on the blue sky, you gaze on the great work of nature in
wonder and astonishment. Yet a hundred beauties beckon you from the
severe emotion of the sublime. When you have sustained this view of the
arch raised against the sky, its black patches here and there shaped by
imagination into grand and weird figures,--among them the eagle, the
lion's head, and the heroic countenance