Not less in the construction of bridges and viaducts, than in the
preparation of the road-bed proper, does the American engineering
faculty display itself. Timber, of the best quality, may be found in
almost every part of the country, and nowhere in the world has the
design and building of wooden bridges been carried to such
perfection and such extent as in the United States. We speak here of
structures built by such engineers as Haupt, Adams, and Latrobe,
--and not of those works, wretched alike in design and execution,
which so often become the cause of what are called terrible
catastrophes and lamentable accidents, but which are, in reality,
the just criticisms of natural mechanical laws upon the ignorance of
pretended engineers.

Among the finest specimens of timberwork in America are the Cascade
Bridge upon the New York and Erie Railroad, designed and built by
Mr. Adams, consisting of one immense timber-arch, having natural
abutments in the rocky shores of the creek;--the second edition of
the bridges generally upon the same road, by Mr. McCallum, which
replaced those originally built during the construction of the road,
--these hardly needing to be taken down by other exertion than their
own;--the bridges from one end to the other of the Pennsylvania
Central Road, by Mr. Haupt;--the Baltimore and Ohio "arch-brace"
bridges, by Mr. Latrobe;--and the Genessee "high bridge," (not a
bridge, by the way, but a trestle,) near Portageville, by Mr. Seymour,
which is eight hundred feet long, and carries the road two hundred
and thirty feet above the river, having wooden trestles (post and
brickwork) one hundred and ninety feet high, seventy-five feet wide
at base, and twenty-five feet at top, and carrying above all a
bridge fourteen feet high; containing the timber of two hundred and