arch is forty feet in perpendicular thickness and sixty feet wide, while the span is exactly eighty-nine feet. A public highway utilizes the bridge, and it is the only means of passage for wagons within a mile either way, except by a steep bank, very difficult to ascend, a short distance below the gorge. Just above the bridge the creek bluffs are broken into masses that look like immense buttresses, pinnacled at places and reaching to a height of 250 feet. The most imposing view is obtained from a position fifty yards below the bridge, where the arch appears both lighter and higher, and the walls more dangerously precipitous. From this point of view this world-famous natural structure appears as perfect as if cut by design; a colossal arch that shines in the sun like variegated marble, without stratification or displacement, so high that the largest sailing vessel might pass under without touching the peak of her mainmast. On the abutments of the bridge are carved the names of many adventurous youths who sought fame by leaving a record of their reckless efforts to scale the dizzy heights of stone. George Washington was not above this ambition to win reputation by carving his name higher up than any of his fellow-youths, and for nearly seventy years he held the honor of being the most intrepid and expert wall-climber, for, like Ben Adam, his name led all the rest. But in 1818 this distinction was surrendered to James Piper, of Washington College, who performed the daring, and what was long thought to be impossible, feat of climbing from the foot of the abutment to the top of the arch, an exploit so dangerous that no one has since made a mad attempt to repeat it. Thomas Jefferson was moved to write a eulogium of this incomparable natural wonder in this wise: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [Illustration: HAWK’S NEST AND CAÑON OF THE KANAWHA RIVER, WEST VIRGINIA.—The scenery all through the Kanawha Valley is picturesque and splendid, but its full glory is not attained until it reaches a place about nine miles beyond the falls. Here, at the point called Hawk’s Nest, which is photographed on this page, the cliffs are majestic, rising to a height of 1200 feet, while immediately in the foreground of the picture a breast of the bluff extends out over the river in a perilous shelf 1000 feet high, from which lofty elevation the winding stream becomes a mere ribbon of white, lined on either side with the dark green colors of the mountain foliage. ] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [Illustration: GALBRAITH SPRINGS, TENNESSEE.]