When you visit our website, if you give your consent, we will use cookies to allow us to collect data for aggregated statistics to improve our service and remember your choice for future visits. Cookie Policy & Privacy Policy
Dear Reader, we use the permissions associated with cookies to keep our website running smoothly and to provide you with personalized content that better meets your needs and ensure the best reading experience. At any time, you can change your permissions for the cookie settings below.
If you would like to learn more about our Cookie, you can click on Privacy Policy.
This was certainly a considerable work, and though it was skilfully conducted, it took some time, for the Mercy at this place was eighty feet wide. It was therefore necessary to fix piles in the bed of the river so as to sustain the floor of the bridge and establish a pile-driver to act on the tops of these piles, which would thus form two arches and allow the bridge to support heavy loads. Happily there was no want of tools with which to shape the wood, nor of iron-work to make it firm, nor of the ingenuity of a man who had a marvellous knowledge of the work, nor lastly, the zeal of his companions, who in seven months had necessarily acquired great skill in the use of their tools; and it must be said that not the least skillful was Gideon Spilett, who in dexterity almost equalled the sai