Chapter I

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permanent among the lower animals, 17, 18; perhaps it may become less troublesome among men, 18, 19; its action in the rise and fall of civilizations, 22, 23; its rule in civil life is inferior to Nature’s beautiful order in her cellular commonwealths, 19, 25, 40-3; yet sentimentalists believe in the illusion called peace and do infinite harm by their canting hostility to national defence, 33, 34, 35, 351, 360-1; see also the last chapter on the evolution of unfortified bridges.

BAUDOUIN, the Elector, in 1344, built the Moselle Bridge at Coblentz, 260.

BAVARIA, bridge over the Main at Würzburg, 259-60.

BEAUCAIRE, PONT DE, a great suspension bridge, 344-5.

BEAVERS, their great intelligence, 110; much human work in bridge-building has shown less intelligence than that which we find in the beaver’s contests against running water, 131.

BECKER, his views on the bridges in ancient Rome, 193.

BECKET, ST. THOMAS À, the Gothic chapel on Old London Bridge was dedicated to him, 216.

BEDDOES, MR. THOMAS, traveller and trader in Equatorial Central Africa, his remarks on tree-bridges made by the natives, 123; and on other primitive bridges, 148-9.

BEDFORD BRIDGE, her old chapel, now destroyed, 231.

BEEHIVE TOMBS at Mycenae, 158-9.

BEES, their intelligence, 110.

BEFFARA, a French architect, in 1752 builds a very remarkable bridge near Ardres, in the Pas-de-Calais, 305-6.

BELGIUM, the Jeanne d’Arc of nations, 34 _footnote_; her old bastille bridges, 289-91.

BELLE CROIX, THE, formerly on the old bridge at Orléans, 246-7.

BENEDICT XIII, expelled from Avignon, 239.

BÉNÉZET, SAINT, his bridge at Avignon. Frontispiece, 81, 82, 83, 236-9; parallel bands of stone in the vaults of the arches, 81, 82, 83; perhaps Bénézet had some correspondence with Peter Colechurch, who began Old London Bridge, 217; the line of his bridge made an elbow pointing upstream, 237, 297; in a bird’s-eye view the design looks like a bridge of boats, 262, 297; Bénézet died before his work was finished, and was buried in the chapel on his bridge, 236; see also the footnote on 280.

BÉRANGER, CHARLES, French publisher, his excellent books on bridges, 318-19.

BERMUDEZ, CEAN, quoted by George Edmund Street, 286.

BERNINI, GIOVANNI L. (1598-1680), his sculpture for the Ponte Sant’ Angelo in Rome, 195; this sculpture is a burden to the bridge rather than a beauty to it, 324.

BERWICK-ON-TWEED, its mediæval bridge fell many times, 49.

BESILLIS, SIR PERIS, helps to build the bridge at Abingdon, 252.

BÉZIERS, its twelfth-century bridge, 92.

BHUTAN, India, its primitive timber bridges with defensive gateways, 73, 272-3.

BIDEFORD BRIDGE, formerly it was graced with a chapel, 231; its twenty arches were built in the 14th century with help from indulgences sanctioned by Grandison, Bishop of Exeter, 305 _footnote_.

BISHOP’S BRIDGE, Norwich, has a double arch ring, 305.

BLASPHEMERS were ducked in the Tarn from the Pont des Consuls at Montauban, 256.

BLUDGET, an American engineer, takes hints from the brothers Grubenmann, 142.

BOARD OF TRADE, London, its report on the Tay Bridge Disaster, 340.

BOATS ought to be added to the remarks on page 58, or to the first section of the second chapter (pp. 109-12), for primitive man got his first boats from Nature. The earliest were floating branches and trees on which men sat astride, drifting with the current of rivers; the later were trees hollowed out by decay, which became models for dug-outs. “Between the primitive dug-out and a modern man-of-war there is, apparently, an impassable gulf; but yet the two are connected by an unbroken chain of successive improvements all registering greater efficiency in mechanical skill. Each of those intermediate increments constitutes a numbered milestone in the history and development of navigation.”--Dr. Robert Munro.

BOATS, BRIDGE OF, at Cologne, 1. It will be remembered that Julius Cæsar frequently made use of boat-bridges, and that Xerxes, four hundred and eighty years before the Birth of Christ, made a bridge of boats across the narrowest part of the Hellespont, between the ancient cities of Sestus and Abydus. So the boat-bridge at Cologne, like the wooden pontoon, has an old and fascinating lineage, yet a modern bridge was going to displace it when the present Great War began. “Kultur” cancels history.

BOFFIY, GUILLERMO, architect of the immense nave in Gerona Cathedral, 28.

BOISSERON, on the little river Bénovie, its disfigured Roman bridge, 179.

BOKYNS, JOHN, in 1483, bequeathed three and fourpence to a chapel to be built on Rotherham Bridge, 233.

BOOKS ON BRIDGES, 318, 319, 320; William Hosking, 317; Emiland Gauthey’s “Traité de la Construction des Ponts,” 127; Colonel Emy’s “Traité de l’Art de la Charpenterie,” 143 _footnote_; Professor Fleeming Jenkin’s “Bridges,” see “Jenkin”; E. Degrand’s “Ponts en Maçonnerie,” 88.

BOOTHS OR SHOPS on Chinese bridges, 210 _footnote_; on European bridges, 210.

BORDEAUX, PONT DE, its length and its cost, 356.

BOUGHS, FORKED, in primitive bridge-building, 135, 148.

BOWER BIRDS, Australian, their architecture is a model to all primitive men, 112.

BRACKETS, below the parapet of the Pont Neuf at Paris, 321. Brackets are ornamental projections from the face of a wall, to support statues and other objects. Some are adorned only with mouldings, while many are carved into angels, or foliage, or heads, or animals. Parker says: “It is not always easy to distinguish a bracket from a corbel; in some cases, indeed, one name is as correct as the other.” See Brangwyn’s drawing of the Pont Neuf facing page 320.

BRADFORD-ON-AVON, Wiltshire, the bridge there has a tiny oratory, 231-2, which was profaned after the Reformation, becoming a “lock-up,” and then a powder magazine, 232. The bridge has nine arches; the two pointed ones uniting the oratory to the bankside have ribbed vaults, and the others are round-headed arches with double rings of voussoirs, 305 _footnote_. Originally the bridge was a narrow one for packhorses, but it was widened in 1645, or thereabouts. A hospital used to stand at one end of the bridge, and doles of charity for it may have been collected in the little place of prayer. Leland admired this bridge, and noted its nine fair arches of stone, and a fair large parish church standing beneath the bridge on Avon ripe.

BRAIN, THE HUMAN, its large size and its infrequent greatness, 110, 111, 112, 239-40; see also the second chapter.

BRANCH RAILWAY LINES over strategic rivers, they are necessary in national defence now that bridges may be damaged seriously with bombs falling from airships and aeroplanes, 355-6.

BRANDRYTH OR BRANDERETH, a mediæval name for a cofferdam, 253, and _footnote_.

BRANGWYN, FRANK, vi, 6, 15, 23, 29, 34, 78, 79, 92, 160, 162, 179, 194, 201, 202, 208, 209, 212, 223, 224, 236, 247, 254, 258, 272, 279, 291, 299, 307, 331; see also the Lists of Illustrations.

BRECON, its bridge has safety recesses built into the piers from the parapet, 258 _footnote_.

BRICK AQUEDUCTS, Roman, 189-90.

BRICK BRIDGES, Persian, 265-6, 270; European, the Pont des Consuls at Montauban, fourteenth century, 255; and the covered bridge over the Ticino at Pavia, 308.

BRIDGE-BUILDING, Roman, 26-30; see also