From ore dug out of the Pennsylvania mountains the steel was made and, piece by piece, the parts were rolled, riveted, or welded together so that every section was exactly according to the measurements laid out on the plan.  As each part was finished it was marked to correspond with the plan and also to show its relation to its neighbour.  It was like a gigantic puzzle.  The parts were made to fit each other accurately, so that when the workmen in Burma came to put them together the tangle of beams and rods, of trusses and braces should be assembled into a perfect, orderly structure—­each part in its place and each doing its share of the work.

With men trained to work with ropes and tackle collected from an Indian seaport, and native riveters gathered from another place, Mr. J.C.  Turk, the engineer in charge, set to work with the American bridgemen and the constructing engineer to build a bridge out of the pieces of steel that lay in heaps along the brink of the gorge.  First, the traveller, or derrick, shipped from America in sections, was put together, and its long arm extended from the end of the tracks on which it ran over the abyss.

From above the great steel beams were lowered to the masonry foundations of the first tower and securely bolted to them, and so, piece by piece, the steel girders were suspended in space and swung this way and that until each was exactly in its proper position and then riveted permanently.  The great valley resounded with the blows of hammers on red-hot metal, and the clangour of steel on steel broke the silence of the tropic wilderness.  The towers rose up higher and higher, until the tops were level with the rim of the valley, and as they were completed the horizontal girders were built on them, the rails laid, and the traveller pushed forward until its arm swung over the foundation of the next tower.

And so over the deep valley the slender structure gradually won its way, supporting itself on its own web as it crawled along like a spider.  Indeed, so tall were its towers and so slender its steel cords and beams that from below it appeared as fragile as a spider’s web, and the men, poised on the end of swinging beams or standing on narrow platforms hundreds of feet in air, looked not unlike the flies caught in the web.

The towers, however, were designed to sustain a heavy train and locomotive and to withstand the terrific wind of the monsoon.  The pressure of such a wind on a 320-foot tower is tremendous.  The bridge was completed within the specified time and bore without flinching all the severe tests to which it was put.  Heavy trains—­much heavier than would ordinarily be run over the viaduct—­steamed slowly across the great steel trestle while the railroad engineers examined with utmost care every section that would be likely to show weakness.  But the designers had planned well, the steel-workers had done their full duty, and the American bridgemen had seen to it that every rivet was properly headed and every bolt screwed tight—­and no fault could be found.