There are four abutments, but my photograph shows only one; and it omits also the main thing of all--the means by which the metal chains are anchored. Still, the abutment is entertaining. It is a stone pillar about five feet high, perhaps a little more or less; it seems to be old, and from two holes pierced through it we learn that several experiments were made before the right leverage was obtained. The first hole was too low down, so another was drilled about 12 inches above it, and through this second hole the chain was passed, then tugged down to its anchorage. Even then the suspension was not effective, the hole or “saddle” being still not high enough above the footway, and the builders knew not what to do. Not only was there insufficient space for a third hole, but very few makers of suspension bridges have been reasonable enough to pass their metal chains _over the summits_ of stone pillars and towers. The Chinese workmen at Auhsien were not more foolish than many European engineers have been, for their perforated pillars are not a bit worse than the perforated towers through which suspension chains pass at Clifton and at Budapest, not to mention many other familiar examples. So determined were the Chinese to overcome their difficulties without using the summit of their pillar, that they cut away the stone until they came to the second hole or saddle, and then they thrust a lump of iron under the taut chain. Next, to increase the tension still more, they put up a smaller pillar perhaps a yard from the first one, forcing it under the iron rods, which at this point strain downward to their anchorage. Curiously enough, the lesser pillar--a sort of understudy--is used as an architect would employ it: along the top a groove is hollowed, and the chain rests in the groove and then dips down at a sharp angle. Perhaps, then, the smaller pillar is fairly new, while the larger one is old. The Rev. O. M. Jackson[141] knows this bridge very well; he lived for five years at Auhsien, and on one occasion the whole bridge was washed away by a spate. For months the iron chains lay here and there on the river-bed; and as floods are frequent, and the bridge is not a high one, very little of the workmanship has had a chance of growing hoar. The pillars have the best chance; and I suppose the iron chains are worth saving from the river whenever the bridge is reconstructed.