Description of the Severnup the Kennebecasis River at the head of the Bay of Fundy, in New Brunswick.
The great rise of this tide is caused by the funnel-like shape of the estuary. The tide running round the South of Ireland, and becoming imprisoned between South Wales and the Cornish and Devonshire coasts, as the width of the channel is continually decreasing, mounts up to a great height, till it reaches, at the mouth of the Wye, a height at spring-tides, of 50 feet above low water.
About 26 miles below Gloucester, where the river is 3,700 feet wide, it is crossed by an iron bridge, constructed to carry the Severn and Wye Railway over it, and so form a connection between Lydney and the coalfields of the Forest of Dean on the west bank, and the Midland Railway between Birmingham and Bristol and the docks, at Sharpness Point, which are situated directly below the bridge, on the east. The bridge was opened on the 19th October, 1879.
Before this date there had long been rivalry between the two schemes for a bridge or a tunnel.
The Great Western Railway Company had been anxious to establish a more direct route between Bristol and South Wales, and to avoid the heavy gradients of the Stroud Valley between Gloucester and Swindon. They obtained, many years ago, an Act to construct a bridge over the river near Chepstow, but the project had been abandoned; and they had finally, in 1871, adopted Mr. Charles Richardson’s