III
THE SLAB-BRIDGE WITH STONE PIERS
Inthis we follow an evolution from unhewn fragments of rock upheld by stepping-stones to Cyclopean slabs of hewn granite and marble supported by well-made stone piers. The halting development of this bold stonecraft was loved and fostered by that original people which for convenience we call Iberian, and which at some unknown period migrated from Asia, “and swept round Europe, whilst a second branch colonised the Nile basin and Northern Africa, and a third streamed east and occupied China and Japan. The master idea in the religion of this people was the cult of ancestors, and the rude stone monuments, menhirs, cromlechs, and kistvaens they have left everywhere, where they have been, all refer to commemoration of the sacred dead. The obelisk in Egypt is the highly refined menhir, and the elaborate, ornamented tombs of the Nile valley are an expression of the same veneration for the dead, and belief in the after life connected with the tomb, that are revealed in the construction of the dolmen andkistvaen.”[39]
What could have been simpler than the building methods of the Iberians? We see them at Stonehenge, which datesfrom about the year 1680B.C., according to the astronomical calculations of Sir Norman Lockyer and the late Mr. F. C. Penrose.[40]Here we have the primitive circle of large stones, and the rugged trilithon (two rude uprights, or menhirs, connected by a long table slab or lintel). There is a feeling for massive construction, but it is barbaric. The clapper bridges over Dartmoor rivers belong to this elementary craftsmanship. Each is a cromlech repeated in several spans over water, no matter when it was built (p.100). Among the ancient Egyptians there were kindred bridges; and the Chinese have managed to preserve in a formidable handicraft an Iberian fondness for the trilithon. Mr. O. M. Jackson tells me that many slab-bridges in Sichuan have lintels about twenty feet in length; they are decorated by sculptors with a dragon’s head and tail at the junction of two lintels and a stone pier. Every dragon’s head looks upstream, and the tail curls out on the downstream side; so the slabs appear to rest for security on the back of a guardian dragon.
There is a Chinese bridge of lintel-slabs, concerning which very different descriptions have been written, but even the most moderate account makes it more than four and a half times longer than the Pont Saint-Esprit (p.293). Gauthey writes about it asfollows:—
“At Loyang, in the Province of Fo-Kien, on an arm ofthe sea, there is a bridge with three hundred spans; its construction went on for eighteen years and employed twenty-five thousand workmen. Technically it belongs to the same class as the bridges of ancient Babylon, which are said to have been made with long and flat stones laid from pier to pier. If Loyang Bridge be 8800 metres in length, as some writers affirm, then its piers will be 4 metres 87 in thickness, and its spans in width will measure 24.36 metres. The footway is 22.74 metres. The long slabs are 5 metres thick and 3 metres wide. As for the piers, they are 23 metres in height, and bear marble lions carved from blocks 7 metres long.”
“At Loyang, in the Province of Fo-Kien, on an arm ofthe sea, there is a bridge with three hundred spans; its construction went on for eighteen years and employed twenty-five thousand workmen. Technically it belongs to the same class as the bridges of ancient Babylon, which are said to have been made with long and flat stones laid from pier to pier. If Loyang Bridge be 8800 metres in length, as some writers affirm, then its piers will be 4 metres 87 in thickness, and its spans in width will measure 24.36 metres. The footway is 22.74 metres. The long slabs are 5 metres thick and 3 metres wide. As for the piers, they are 23 metres in height, and bear marble lions carved from blocks 7 metres long.”
Gauthey gives a drawing of this bridge, and his measurements are taken from the Atlas of Martimmart. They have an air of great exaggeration. As Gauthey remarks, “It is difficult to believe that the tabular stones are as large as they are presumed to be: their bulk is more than threefold greater than that of the obelisk at Rome in the Place de Saint-Pierre. Besides, M. Pingeron speaks of them as being fourteen metres long by a metre and a half in thickness and in width, so he diminishes by a full half the length of Loyang Bridge. Even with this reduction it is a wonderful achievement, more than four and a half times longer than the Pont duSaint-Esprit.”[41]
The dimensions given by M. Pingeron may be accurate; they represent a hugely magnified clapper bridge decorated with sculpture and carried on tall piers for a distance of4400 metres, in a series of three hundred spans. The marble lions, I suppose, ornament the parapets above the piers, like those on the bridge of Pulisangan (p.310). Marco Polo visited the province of Fo-Kien, where Loyang Bridge is said to be, and stayed at the city of Kue-lin-fu, known to-day as Kien-ning-fu. Here he was greatly struck by “three very handsome bridges, upwards of a hundred paces in length, and eight paces in width.”[42]Not a vivid description, yet enough to prove that notable bridges in Fo-Kien have had a long history.