The bridge of Almaraz had been destroyed to lengthen the French lateral communications, and Wellington now ordered the bridge of Alcantara to be repaired to shorten his own. The breach in that stupendous structure was ninety feet wide, and one hundred and fifty feet above the water line. Yet the fertile genius of colonel Sturgeon furnished the means of passing this chasm, with heavy artillery, and without the enemy being aware of the preparations made until the moment of execution. In the arsenal of Elvas he secretly prepared a net-work of strong ropes, after a fashion which permitted it to be carried in parts, and with the beams, planking, and other materials it was transported to Alcantara on seventeen carriages. Straining beams were then fixed in the masonry, on each side of the broken arch, cables were stretched across the chasm, the net-work was drawn over, tarpaulin blinds were placed at each side, and the heaviest guns passed in safety. This remarkable feat procured a new, and short, internal line of communication, along good roads, while the enemy, by the destruction of the bridge at Almaraz, was thrown upon a long external line, and very bad roads. Hill’s corps was thus suddenly brought a fortnight’s march nearer to Wellington, than Drouet was to Marmont, if both marched as armies with artillery; but there was still a heavy drag upon the English general’s operations. He had drawn so largely upon Portugal for means of transport, that agriculture was seriously embarrassed, and yet his subsistence was not secured for more than a few marches beyond the Agueda. To remedy this he set sailors and workmen to remove obstructions in the Douro and the Tagus; the latter, which in Philip the Second’s time had been navigable from Toledo to Lisbon, was opened to Malpica, not far from Alcantara, and the Douro was opened as high as Barca de Alba, below which it ceases to be a Spanish river. The whole land transport of the interior of Portugal was thus relieved; the magazines were brought up the Tagus, close to the new line of communication by Alcantara, on one side; on the other, the country vessels conveyed povisions to the mouth of the Douro, and that river then served to within a short distance of Almeida, Ciudad Rodrigo, and Salamanca. Still danger was to be apprehended from the American privateers along the coast, which the Admiralty neglected; and the navigation of the Douro was suddenly suspended by the overheated zeal of a commissary, who being thwarted by the delays of the boatmen, issued, of his own authority, an edict, establishing regulations, and pronouncing pains and penalties upon all those who did not conform to them. The river was immediately abandoned by the craft, and the government endeavoured by a formal protest, to give political importance to this affair, which was peculiarly vexatious, inasmuch as the boatmen were already so averse to passing the old points of navigation, that very severe measures were necessary to