nd land, but, when morning came at last, few were prepared for
the appalling catastrophe it had caused. Sweeping up the Firth of Tay,
it had torn away a portion of the great railway bridge that crossed the
inlet, and hurled it into the water. A train was passing over at the
time, and plunged into the abyss with all its passengers. The terrible
event shook public confidence, and we might almost say that the gale of
that December night caught all the drawings and papers connected with
the proposed suspension bridge over the Forth, and swept them from
public favour.

[Illustration: "Fire!"]

Immediately afterwards, Sir John Fowler and Mr. Benjamin Baker (both
celebrated engineers) came forward with an alternative plan of which no
one could doubt the strength. It may perhaps be described as an
arch-suspension bridge, because the design includes the strength of both
styles; but engineers themselves call it a cantilever bridge.

[Illustration: Building the Bridge. The Forth Bridge at the Present Day.
Train crossing the Bridge.]

Work was begun in earnest in June, 1883, and the first passenger train
crossed from shore to shore in March, 1890. At the place chosen for its
erection, the river is one mile and one hundred and fifty yards wide.
Nearly in the middle of the stream there is a rocky island called
Inchgarvie, and on this the great striding giant would have to plant one
of its ponderous feet. But Inchgarvie was private property, and
trespassers were likely to be prosecuted. So the stepping-stone for the
giant to place its foot upon could not be laid there until the island
had been bought and paid for. This being done, a huge caisson, similar
to those which we have seen sunk under the piers of Brooklyn Bridge, was
floated out to the island, and there lowered on to the rock under
water, and firmly bedded. It was followed by three others, forming, as
it were, the four corners of an oblong, which is two hundred and seventy
feet long and one hundred and twenty wide. Eight more caissons were
built, four for each side of the river, and these were sunk on to beds
of firm clay, some of them being as much as seventy feet below the
surface of the water. On each caisson a stone pier was built to take the
iron columns of the main structure, and thus we see the bridge was to
cross the mile-wide river in three strides. Starting from the southern
shore at Queensferry, the first group of four stepping-stones lie six
hundred and eighty