only by ropes; but though of an inconsiderable size, they are so unsteady and so little to be trusted that they cannot be crossed without sensations of fear.” While our attention is directed to early accounts and to the origin of suspension bridges, it may be proper to remark, that although, as we have seen, the inhabitants of the mountainous districts of South America, or the wild and barbarous regions of Thibet, appear to have been well acquainted with the purposes for which these structures are best adapted, and to have practised their construction from the most remote ages, neither the Greeks, the Romans, nor the Egyptians, according to all we know of those nations, had any knowledge of their uses or properties, or ever employed them as a means for crossing a river, or other natural impediment. It is not, therefore, from these celebrated nations of antiquity that the engineer has derived his first hints for the construction of suspension bridges, but from those rude and unpolished people, the results of whose ingenuity have just been described. But it will now be interesting to inquire how far we can trace back the antiquity of suspension bridges in more civilized countries--on the Continent, in the British Isles, and in the United States of America. Scamozzi speaks of suspension bridges existing in Europe in the beginning of the seventeenth century, but it is very questionable if he employed that term to designate the same structure to which it is now applied; and this is rendered the more improbable, as no such bridges are now in existence, and other writers are totally silent upon the subject. It does not appear, then, that suspension bridges of other than recent erection have existed on the Continent, and in England the oldest of which we have any account has not been constructed more than a century. The first suspension bridge in the United States was erected in the year 1796. In England the oldest bridge of the kind is believed to have been the Winch Chain Bridge, suspended over the Tees, and thus forming a communication between the counties of Durham and York. Mr Stevenson (Edinburgh Philosophical Journal) expresses his regret at not having been able to learn the precise date of the erection of this bridge; from good authority, however, he concludes it to be about the year 1741. It may also be mentioned here, that at Carric-a-rede, near Ballintoy, in Ireland, there is a rope bridge, which in 1800 was reported to have been in use longer than the present generation could remember. In the years 1816 and 1817, some _wire_ suspension bridges were executed in Scotland, and, though not of great extent, are the first example of this species of bridge architecture in Great Britain. As, however, full descriptions of these bridges are to be met with elsewhere, it will not be necessary to notice them further.