The Bridge of San Luis Rey [antikvár]

PART ONE Perhaps an Accident ON Friday nooA, July the twentieth, 1714, the finest bridge in al^ Peru ^q^ and precipitated five travellers into the (gulf below. This bridge was on the high road between Lima and Cuzco, and hundreds of ^ , cJ/^i^-persons passed over it every day. It had been woven of osier by the Incas more than a century before, and v visitors to the city were always W put to see it. It was a " . '! Ulci^i" rnere ladder of thin slats swung put over the gorge, with | Lt'^Yv handrails of dried vine. Horses and coaches and chairs '? i had to go down hundreds of^fg^ below and pass over , i^Bt narrow torrent on rafts, but no one, not even the ' ¦ yiceroy, not even the Archbishop of Lima, had de- _ u^rrjij^ i. ^ scended with the baggage rather than cross by the famous bridge of San Luis Rey. St Louis of France himself pro- T ; tected it, by his name and by the little mud church on ' 'V J f. i the farther side. The bridge seemed to be amonL_^ -things that last for ever; it was unthinkable thatlt should^^ break. The moment a Peruvian heard of the accident he''^^^^^ f:;': signed himself and made a mental calculation as to how , . recently he had crossed by it and how soon he had in- ' i».- tended crossing by it again. People wandered about in a '{?wi. state, muttering: they had the hallucination II of seeing themselves falling into a gulf. ^ i r ts ^ 7 Li ^ '