288 MAN AND NATURE. 



number of passengers and tonnage of goods conveyed, 

 and the gross and net profits of the whole. But we 

 may well look for a moment at some of those astonish- 

 ing works to which we have alluded, as created by this 

 change in the locomotion of the world works in 

 which man has attained a higher mastery over nature 

 than even the boldest imagination ever before sug- 

 gested. Take bridges as an example. In our own 

 boyhood we were shown the iron arch over the Wear, 

 at Sunderland, as one of the wonders of England a 

 structure which the modern tourist would hardly halt 

 to look upon. The suspension bridge over the Menai 

 came next ; a bold and beautiful work, but adapted 

 only to the old system of mail-coach roads. With the 

 invention of the railway and steam locomotion came 

 the tubular bridge over the same strait, a work of less 

 beauty, but more wonderful in its dimensions, and in 

 the new and singular principle of construction due to 

 Mr. Fairbairn, of which it was the first example. Its 

 success emboldened Mr. Stephenson to undertake that 

 far greater work, the tubular bridge of Montreal, little 

 less than two miles in length, and stretching across the 

 wide waters of the St. Lawrence, hardly yet calmed 

 from their rush down the rapids of Lachine. As a 

 monument of grand engineering this bridge is not 

 likely to be surpassed the less likely as its benefit to 

 the shareholders is far from being commensurate to 

 the cost. Another triumph of human power on the 

 same river is the suspension railway bridge of Niagara, 

 scarcely two miles below the Great Falls, where the 

 St. Lawrence, rushing impetuously, rather than flowing, 



