This was a
wire suspension bridge, hung from framed towers of timber built upon
the piers. Instead of suspending the roadway from the wire cables by
the ordinary connecting rods, and giving stiffness to it by a
trussed railing, a latticed framing of wood hung directly from the
cables, and the timbers of the roadway being fastened to this by
stirrups, the wooden lattice served both to suspend and to stiffen
the road. It was a serviceable and cheap structure, built in two
weeks, and answered our purposes well till it was burned in the next
autumn, when Colonel Lightburn retreated before a Confederate
invasion. [Footnote: _Id_., p. 99.]
The variable position of the head of steamboat navigation on the
Kanawha made it impossible to fix a permanent depot as a terminus
for our wagon trains in the upper valley. My own judgment was in
favor of placing it at Kanawha Falls, a mile below Gauley Bridge,
and within the limits of that post. To connect this with the
steamboats wherever the shoaling water might force them to stop, I
recommended the use of batteaux or keelboats, a craft which a
natural evolution had brought into use in the changeable mountain
rivers.
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