The Great Bridge by David McCullough

Author:David McCullough
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: #genre
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2007-05-31T04:00:00+00:00

There are times when standing alone on this spot, one feels as completely isolated as if in a dungeon. Some three years ago I had an experience of this kind by daylight. It was in the early morning, when a dense fog covered the whole region, that having occasion to examine some machinery, I went on the tower before the time for commencing work. I shall never forget that morning. I found the fog had risen to within twenty feet of the top of the tower, and there it hung, dense, opaque, tangible. It was what you might seem to cut with a knife. It seemed that I might jump down and walk upon it unharmed. It looked like a dull ocean of lead-colored little billows; vast, dead, immovable.

The fog seemed to follow the conformation of the ground, rising to a certain height above it in all directions, and obscuring all below that line. The spires of Trinity in New York, and in Brooklyn, and the tops of the masts of a ship in one of the dry docks, with the roof of the bridge towers, were all that were visible of the world below. Here and there where the heat from the furnace chimneys rarefied the air, white cones would rise like boiling springs, and I could in one direction trace the cautious movement of a steamer by the same means. Rising through this misty veil was the confused crash and roar of busy life below.

By and by the heads of the workmen began to appear, as they clambered up the stairway…The fog lost its density. A thin vapor seemed to rise from it—a fog upon a fog—like a mist from the ocean, and the whole began to settle and to melt away. Spires, masts and chimneys began to appear; boats were seen dodging about like porpoises, just below the surface of the mist. By 10 o’clock the fog had disappeared, and travel, which had been seriously interrupted, was resumed.

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