THE evolution of the bridge has been one long heroic struggle on the part of man
to throw a roadway over a river or a yawning ravine. Whenever a savage stretched a rope
of fibre or a strip of hide across a river or chasm, in that lay the embodiment of the
principal of the latest suspension bridge. If he threw a tree-trunk over, he anticipated the girder bridge. When he overhung logs from opposite sides to meet in the centre, he anticipated the true cantilever bridge. If he inclined two logs or stones towards each other and covered and connected them at the top with a flat stone, he came very near to devising the cantilever and girder bridge in one direction, or the arch in the other.
Capt. R.D. Heseltine