1833.3 Beosi River, near Sagar, Central India. 589 
even seen iron of the dimensions required. The question has been 
satisfactorily answered ; and even in point of economy, notwithstand- 
ing the numberless extra expences incident to a first undertaking, and 
the distance, eleven miles, of the work from the yard at Sagar, the 
bridge has been pronounced cheaper than those in Calcutta made with 
English materials: while of its design and execution no higher 
encomium can be given than the assurance of the visiting engineer, 
Major Irving, that he had seen nothing superior to it in Europe. The’ 
Governor General is stated to have expressed equal satisfaction after in- 
spection, and only to have regretted that so noble a bridge should be 
wasted upon so remote a locality ! 
We have with permission taken a reduced copy of the elevation and 
plan, lithographed by M. Tassin, to accompany a private Memoir of 
the Beosi bridge. The latter authentic source supplies us with the 
following particulars of the work. 
The foundation was laid in April, 1828, and the roadway opened to 
the public in June, 1830. 
The iron of which it is composed is entirely the produce of the Sa- 
gar district. When the bridge was projected, it was still in the state 
of ore in the mines, whence it was extracted, smelted and made into 
irregular small lumps, in the common native fashion. The working 
of these crude impure masses into good bars of the requisite dimensions ' 
was a matter of very great labour and difficulty. 
The bridge is 200 feet in span between the points of suspension. 
The piers, resting on the solid rock, six feet under the low level of 
of the river, are 42 feet high to the roadway; being elevated two 
feet above the ordinary surface of the country: they have a base of 
32 feet by 224, decreasing upwards in front one in five, and on the sides 
one in eight feet ; which gives on the road a superficies of 21 by 
14 feet for each pier. On the sides are wing walls or abutments, running 
back into the bank 26 feet. 
‘The pillars, or rather arches, of suspension have a base of 21 by 12 
feet, admitting a roadway of 9 feet broad. The arches are 15 feet high, 
and are faced with accurately wrought stone. The points of suspension 
are elevated 22 feet 45 inches from the road : the pillars have a total 
height of 33 feet, and the whole masonry from the rock, 68 feet. The 
piers and abutments contain 82,488 cubic feet of masonry; the arched 
standards and bridge parapets, 8900 : in all 91,388 cubic feet. 
The platform measures 200 feet in length by 12 feet broad, and is 
calculated to weigh, with the chains, 52% tons. Supposing the bridge 
crowded with men, at 69 lbs. per superficial foot all over the platform, 
3 Aa 2 
