ed to the Mississippi, and the skill to adapt them. For simple as the bald theory is, there was need of the nicest appreciation of laws and forces in applying it, and the result has been called the greatest engineering feat ever accomplished. The problem of making the quantity of water needed run _up_ into the smallest pass "through a narrow, artificially contracted channel, located immediately between two great natural outlets,"--this problem being complicated by many "occult conditions,"--has been called, by no mean engineer, perhaps the most difficult problem ever dealt with successfully. "There is no instance, indeed, in the world where such a vast volume of water is placed under such absolute and permanent control of the engineer, through methods so economic and simple." To the non-mechanical mind the control of such a multitude of abstruse, minute, and exact details as combine in the making of a bridge seems perhaps more marvelous than the mere bending of nature's forces to serve the ends of man. In Eads the power to do both existed. On piles in the marsh houses were built for the engineers and the workmen, and the Jetties were begun. Eads was not able to be there in person all the time, but as usual his choice of competent and faithful lieutenants was noteworthy. His plans were approved by an advisory board of very eminent engineers; and by the end of one
