Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 271, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 November 1916 — CERNAVODA BRIDGE A WONDER [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

CERNAVODA BRIDGE A WONDER

changes extend over centuries, so slow is the normal change in the surface of the land on which they grow and in the other factors which affect them. The Shifting Panorama. But in the dune country such changes in surface are rapid. From year to year the dunes creep and crawl under the influence of the winds. New dunes are created, old dunes swept away; where a dune has been conquered by plants and trees and has stood the same for years the shifting sands may start an invasion and pile a new dune on top of the old. To all these constantly shifting conditions the trees and plants as constantly fight to accommodate themselves. z One may see a promising forest of Jack pines, maples or cottonwoods half buried in the rising sand or drowned in the flood, with nothing bu£ their dead tops projecting. One may find where the willows, for instance, quickly changing to meet the changing conditions, have grown trunks twice as tall as usual, with roots running out several feet higher than the original surface of the ground. Sometimes after the trees have grown tall the sand moves away instead of piling up and the roots are left bare, twisting and twining in curious shapes. Some of the sand dunes are more than 10 feetJiigh, and in many instances their tops and sides are carved into beautiful and strange shapes the lake winds. Especially desirable is the preservation of a part of the dune country as a park and reservation for wild life near

Great Railway Span Across the Danube Cost Roumanian Government Nearly $7,000,000. Regele Carol I Is the official name of the greatest bridge in Roumanla and one of the most interesting series of railway spans in the world. It is the long steel and stone link which when completed in 1895 bound Ostend on the North sea to Constantza on the Black sea, two ports that at the outbreak of this war were connected by a de luxe express train service three times .a weeks, says a bulletin of the National Geographic society. At the time it was thrown open to traffic this was the only bridge spanning the Danube below the Serbian capital of Belgrade. The engineer responsible for the structure was a Roumanian, A. Sallgny, by whose name the village of Cernavoda is designated on some of the more modern maps of that country.

Together with the approaches and the stone causeways across that part of the neighboring marshes and meadows which are -subject to periodical inundations, this great structure is fully 14 miles long. The bridge proper, over the main channel of the river,4s—a slender iron structure more than 2,400 feet long, disposed in. five arches. Two mighty abutments on the right and left banks, together with six stone piers and ice-breakers, support this section which is elevated more than 100 feet above the water, thus enabling the tallest vessels to pass beneath it without hindrance. The bridge cost the Roumanian government nearly $7,000,000. With its completion Bucharest was brought within a seven hoars’ journey of the Black sea shore. The eastern end of the bridge is 30 miles in an airline west of Constantza, and 90 miles east of Bucharest. The distance by rail between the capital and the port is 147 miles. Owing to the importance of this line in the handling of troops landed at Constantza by Russian transports, work probably has been rushed on the double tracking of the road between Bucharest and Cernavoda, this extension of the state-owned railway system having been decided upon by the Roumanian parliament more than a year ago.

THE EVER CHANGING DUNES