Wooden bridges have taken a high rank in modern engineering, and for boldness in their planning, united with mechanical simplicity and perfection, the United States enjoys the highest reputation. The traveler, the first time that he passes over them, feels a thrilling sensation of peril as he shudderingly gazes down into the abysses below. The following description will give a very good general idea of their construction. Spanning Dale Creek, a mountain stream near Sherman, is a trestle bridge 650 feet from one rocky bluff to another. High, light, and airy, 126 feet above the stream, it looks light as fairy frost-work, but its strength is enormous.

Not a single bit of the timber used in this bridge but what is at least twelve inches in diameter. The supporting pillars are banded together with ingeniously contrived iron plates. Another wooden trestle bridge is at a place that, from its gloomy character, has been named the Devil's Gate. This is about ten miles from Salt Lake, where the Weber River rushes down a chasm in the Rocky Mountains. On the first opening of this bridge, the train passed over on a trestle bridge seventy-eight feet above the furious stream. A Government inspector thus reported of the spot: "Should a train go down into this fearful gulf all who escaped being crushed would inevitably be drowned." The bridge is a double trestle, one resting on the other, "the sup-porting timbers standing at an angle of about forty degrees, gradually narrowing from the base to the top. The upper timbers, among other means adopted to prevent their giving way, are secured by large ropes tied around them, and fastened to projecting rocks above." Good trestle-work is supposed to last from fifteen to twenty years, and for viaducts it is ascertained to be much cheaper than embankments. Among famous trestle-bridges may be here mentioned that at Pittsburg, 1,172 feet long; the Portage Bridge on the Erie Railroad, 800 feet long, and so constructed that a single timber could be taken out, if needed.