Here, on the right, is a tiny swinging foot-bridge over the river.
This is the beginning, the suggestion, for the vast suspension bridges
that have allowed the world to cross the great North River from New
York to Brooklyn, and that span great rivers and gorges elsewhere in
the world. Nay! scarcely the beginning. That you find further up and
deeper down in the High Sierras and their shaded and wooded canyons,
where wild vines throw their clinging tendrils across from one shore
to another of foaming creeks, and gradually grow in girth and strength
until they form bridges, over which chipmunks, squirrels, porcupines,
'coons, coyotes, and finally mountain lions, bears, and even men cross
with safety. There is the _real origin_ of the suspension bridge.
But this is a miniature, a model, a suggestion of the big bridges.
It affords ready access to the house on the other side. In winter,
however, the boards are taken up, as the heavy snows that fall and
accumulate might wreck it.
It is hard to realize that, a few months from now, when winter begins,
this railroad must perforce cease its operations. Snow falls, here,
where the sun is now smiling so beneficently upon laughing meadows,
dotted here and there with dainty flowers, to a depth of ten and even
twenty feet.
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