Although I had been anxiously looking forward to this time, and my mind
had been considerably excited by expectation, yet I was not altogether
prepared for this visit. This great work of nature is considered by many
as the second great curiosity in our country, Niagara Falls being the
first. I do not expect to convey a very correct idea of this bridge; for
no description can do this.

The Natural Bridge is entirely the work of God. It is of solid
limestone, and connects two huge mountains together, by a most beautiful
arch over which there is a great wagon road. Its length from one
mountain to the other is nearly eighty feet, its width about
thirty-five, its thickness forty-five, and its perpendicular height
above the water is not far from two hundred and twenty feet. A few
bushes grow on its top, by which the traveller may hold himself as he
looks over. On each side of the stream, and near the bridge, are rocks
projecting ten or fifteen feet over the water, and from two hundred to
three hundred feet from its surface, all of limestone. The visitor
cannot give so good a description of the bridge as he can of his
feelings at the time. He softly creeps out on a shaggy projecting rock,
and, looking down a chasm from forty to sixty feet wide, he sees, nearly
three hundred feet below, a wild stream foaming and dashing against the
rocks beneath, as if terrified at the rocks above. This stream is called
Cedar Creek. He sees under the arch, trees whose height is seventy feet;
and yet, as he looks down upon them, they appear like small bushes of
perhaps two or three feet in height. I saw several birds fly under the
arch, and they looked like insects. I threw down a stone, and counted
thirty-four before it reached the water. All hear of heights and of
depths, but they here _see_ what is high, and they tremble, and _feel_
it to be deep. The awful rocks present their everlasting butments, the
water murmurs and foams far below, and the two mountains rear their