This upset official calculations severely, and accordingly fresh tenders for a simpler type of bridge were called. The task was thrown open to the world, and celerity of construction was the primordial condition. The British firms re-tendered, but to their disgust they were beaten hopelessly both in regard to the cost of the structure and the time in which it could be erected by the American engineers. The result was that the contract went to a Philadelphia firm. Five weeks after the receipt of the order the steel-work left New York, and within a further few weeks communication across the river was provided by 7 spans of steel, each 147 feet long, resting on cast-iron cylinders. [Illustration: [_See page 164_ THE “HANGING BRIDGE,” ONE OF THE RAILWAY ENGINEERING WONDERS OF THE DENVER AND RIO GRANDE, IN THE ROYAL GORGE OF COLORADO] The most remarkable feature about this contract was the public outcry that ensued. British methods were held up in comparison with American hustle, much to the disparity of the former. British builders were assailed as lethargic, wedded to obsolete methods, and consequently had suffered the penalty of such conservatism by being beaten in a most hollow manner. The same critics, however, failed to shriek so loudly in acclamation a year later in appreciation of a British firm which accomplished a feat which even startled the Americans. This was in connection with a bridge of five spans, each 105 feet long, which was turned out of a Midland shop to replace the structure which had been destroyed by the Boers across the Tugela River in Natal. Both British and American engineers were invited to tender, and the American firms, despite their wonderful organisation, hustling methods, and their remarkable facilities for accomplishing quick work, were dismayed to find that they had been beaten by their British rivals as hollow as the latter had been vanquished some months before. The successful firm rolled 100 tons of steel, had it inspected, tested and passed by the Natal Government engineer in eight hours. It had undertaken to deliver the first span within six weeks of the receipt of the order--as a matter of fact, it was completed within nineteen days. The Americans themselves admitted that the British performance was wonderful, and that complete revenge had been taken for the Atbara contract. As the railway pushed its way towards Khartoum, the ranks of the labourers were swelled by large numbers of dervishes, who had grown disheartened at the result of their resistance to the British advance on the northern borders of the Mahdi’s stronghold, had realised the impotency of their efforts, and consequently had decided to throw in their lot on the railway. The increased labour enabled the work to be prosecuted even more energetically, though a certain amount of time was lost in drilling this raw material into the mysteries of wielding the white man’s tools.