ggO EEPOET — 1882. 



has increased a hundredfold. Parliament, hj the passing of the Forth Bridge Act 

 durino- the present session, has given a practical recognition ot the truth ot the 

 statement in the ahove-quoted report, that the improvement of the Forth passage 

 is a ' national object.' ., „ nr -d i 



As you vnW receive a paper on the Forth Bridge from my partner, Mr. Baker, 

 I will not trouble you with details of the proposed structure at the present moment.- 

 I mav state however, that after a careful consideration of the difficult problem, in 

 concert with my able colleagues, Mr. T. E. Harrison, tlie cluef engineer of the 

 North-Eastern Railway, and Mr. W. IT. Barlow, chief engineer of the Midland . 

 Railway, we unanimously advised the directors of the Forth Bridge ( ompany to 

 abandon the project for a suspension bridge, and to construct a steel girder bridge 

 of the unprecedented span of 1,700 feet. Tlie total length of the structure is U 

 miles, and it includes two spans, as aforesaid, of 1,700 feet, and two of 0,5 ieet 

 over the na^•i"•able channels on each side of luchgarvie. The execution ot the wort 

 has been entrusted to me, and my intention is that the Forth Bridge shall be not 

 only the bi"-<^est, but the strongest' and stillest bridge yet constructed. 



"Vlthou^h o-reat navigable rivers ofier the most serious impediments to lines of 

 comniunicatiou lying at right angles to the direction of the stream, and necessitate 

 such formidable imdertalvings as the Forth Bridge, with a clear headway ot 150 

 feet above hio-h water, and the Severn Tunnel at a depth of 1G.3 feet below the same 

 datum still il must be remembered that such rivers were the earliest, and are yet 

 the cheapest, highways for inland communication. Antwerp, the third port in the 

 world rankiu"- only after London and Liverpool, owes its commercial importance 

 nudou'btedlv to the Scheldt, which aflbrds admirable water-carriage for a distance 

 of 60 miles" from the sea-coast inland. London, similarly, is an inland port situated 

 about 50 miles up the Thames: hence one-lwlf of the distance between Antwerp 

 and London is made up of fine rivers capable of being navigated by the largest 

 oceaii-"-oinc' steamers. The practical result of the existence of this splendid line of 

 naturalf communication is that iron girders and rails can be conveyed from the heart 

 of Belgium to the metropolis at a far lower price per ton than from any ironworks 

 in this country. Unfortunately, the southern coast of England and the opposite 

 coast of France are indented by no such rivers as the Thames and the Scheldt, or 

 we should never have heard of the horrors of the ' middle passage ' in ' cockleshell ' 

 boats, or of the Channel Tunnel ,., . , ■ . -,•..- -i a 



To realise, however, the important part which rivers play in facihtating_ inland 

 communication, it is necessary to glance at the other side of the Atlantic. In 

 Canada for instance, we have the great inland port of Montreal, where trans- 

 atlantic steamers anchor some 500 miles from the coast. The yery term ' stream of 

 traffic ' sut'n-ests a river, and the St. Lawrence well illustrates it. Into some small 

 fore«t tributary of the Ottawa the lumber-men slide a log of timber, and many 

 month'i after will that log, with thousands of others, forming together a huge raft, 

 with huts upon it for the accommodation of the care-takers, be ibund pnrsuing its 

 slow but ever-continuing progi-essdown the St. Lawrence to Quebec, where it will 



be shipped to this country. n , i . j- ^i >t-i 



In E<^ypt for countless ages the 'ship of the desert' and the boats of the JNile 

 constituted the only means of communication. "Wheeled carriages were practically 

 unknown, although as long ago as 1832, Meheraet Ali bewildered the pilgrims by 

 startiu"- off for Mecca across the desert in a Long Acre barouche. But the JNile 

 holds an exceptional position amongst the rivers of the world, for notonly was it 

 until quite recently practically the sole means of inland communication for the 

 country through which it flows, but it was, and still is, literally the life of Egypt, 

 since without Nile water there would not be a green spot in the whole of that now 

 fertile land. Haying filled the office of consulting engineer to the Egyptian 

 Government for seyen years, I have had occasion to give particular attention to 

 the Nile, and I may state that in an average year that river conveys no less than 

 100 000 million tons of water, and 65 million tons of silica, alumina, lime, and 

 other fertilising solids down to the Mediterranean. The Nile begins to rise about 

 the middle of June, at which time the discharge averages about 3-50 tons of water 

 per second, and attains in September a height of from 19 feet to 28 feet, and a dis- 

 charge of from 7,000 to 10,000 tons per second. 



