the chief and a crew of Indians, to see the finished piers and also the
coffer-dams and works of the new bridge over the St. Lawrence, by means
of which his Company are to reach the Eastern Railways of the United
States, without having to use the great Victoria Bridge at Montreal.
This bridge, of 1,000 yards, or 3,000 feet, in length, is a remarkable
structure. It was commenced in May and intended to be finished in
November. But the foundations of the central pier, in deep and doubtful
water, were not begun, though about to begin, and this, as it appeared
to me, might delay the work somewhat. The work is a fine specimen of
engineering, by which I mean the adoption of the simplest and cheapest
mode of doing what is wanted. All the traffic purposes required are
here secured in a few months, and for about 200,000_l_. only.

The "Victoria" bridge at Montreal is a very different structure. A long
sheet-iron box, 9,184 feet in length, with 26 piers 60 feet above the
water level, and costing from first to last 2,000,000_l_.
sterling. The burning of coal had begun to affect it; but Mr.
Haunaford, the chief engineer of the Grand Trunk, has made some
openings in the roof, which do not in any way reduce the strength of
the bridge, and at the same time get rid of, at once into the air, the
sulphurous vapours arising from coal combustion.

Mr. Peterson told me that their soundings in winter showed that ice
thickened and accumulated at the bottom of the river. This would seem,
at first sight, impossible. But experiment, Mr. Peterson said, had
proved the fact, which was accounted for by scientific people in
various and, in some cases, conflicting ways. May it not be that the
accumulation is ice from above, loaded with earth or stones, which,
sinking to the bottom by gravity, coagulates from the low temperature
it produces itself? Mr. Peterson is not merely an engineer, and an