We arrived at Montreal at eight o'clock on the evening of the 24th, and walked a little about the town. The moon was so bright that colours could be clearly distinguished. We yesterday spent many hours on the Victoria bridge which is building here across the river in connection with the Grand Trunk Railway. It is a most wonderful work, and I must refer you to an interesting article in the last _Edinburgh Review_ for a full account of it. Papa had letters to the chief officials of the railway, which procured us the advantage of being shown the work in every detail by Mr. Hodges (an Englishman), who has undertaken the superintendence of it--the plans having been given him by Stephenson. The expense will be enormous--about a million and a quarter sterling; almost all raised in England. The great difficulties to be contended with are:--the width of the river--it being two miles wide at this point; its rapidity--the current running at the rate of seven miles an hour; and the enormous masses of ice which accumulate in the river in the winter; rising as high sometimes as the houses on either side, and then bursting their bounds and covering the road. The stone piers are built with a view to resist as much as possible this pressure; and a great number of them are finished, and have never yet received a scratch from the ice, which is satisfactory. Their profile is of this form. And this knife-like edge cuts the ice through as it passes down the river, enabling the blocks to divide at the piers and pass under the bridge on each side. The piers are built of limestone, in blocks varying from eight to ten feet high: but in sinking a foundation for them, springs are frequently met with under some large boulders in the bed of the river, and this causes great delay, as the water has to be pumped out before the building can proceed. The bridge will be an iron tubular one; the tubes come out from Birkenhead in pieces, and are riveted together here. We first rowed across the river with Mr. Hodges in a six-oared boat; and the day being warm and very fine, we enjoyed it much. This gave us some idea of the breadth of the river and of the length of the bridge, of which it is impossible to judge when seen fore-shortened from the shore. [Illustration: Bridge piers]