214 
SCENES IN INDIA. 
sengers upon the bridge. From the bottom of the 
upright bamboos are carried other thick ropes, drawn 
towards those above by a lacing of cords, which 
serves as a rail to protect passengers while crossing. 
Flat pieces of bamboo traversing the lower ropes at 
very short distances, form a sufficiently secure footing, 
although, to persons not accustomed to pass this fragile- 
looking structure, the security is not so perfect as to 
hush those alarms which the chafing of the waters 
beneath seldom fails to produce. 
On the top of the rock, near the river, in the fore- 
ground, are the remains of a considerable building, 
probably used originally as a fortress, but subse- 
quently inhabited by a Hindoo devotee. 
It is a curious fact, that these rude specimens of 
Hindoo art are the prototypes of suspension bridges 
in this country, which are constructed radically upon 
the same principle, aided of course by the improved 
suggestions of modern science: but when it is known 
that those structures have existed in northern India 
for many centuries, we naturally become interested in 
works which have originated in our own country 
such a vast improvement in a most important branch 
of architecture. It is clear that the principles of ma- 
thematical science were well understood by the inhabi- 
tants of this mountainous region, who at no era of 
their history have exhibited so high a degree of civi- 
lisation as their more southern countrymen of the 
plains, even at a period when the people of England 
were little better than barbarians, the slaves of Drui- 
dical tyranny and superstition, and utterly unable to 
comprehend the perplexities of any mechanical con- 
