3-082-578 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Chitral Expedition: the Bridge at Chitral, 1895. Engraving from a photograph supplied by Sir William Lockhart. 'With the exception of military expeditions which have been sent to chastise native tribes, very few Europeans have passed from the Peshawur Valley over the mountainous country to Chitral which Sir Robert Low's troops are now fighting their way through. This will account for the great dearth of pictorial matter relating to this region...Major Biddulph states that "half a mile above the fort [at Chitral] is an excellent wooden bridge protected by a stone tower at each end." We are able to give an Illustration of this, but the photograph does not include both the towers. This bridge is built in the same manner as the bridges in Kashmir, the Sutlej Valley, and all over the Northern Himalayas. Curiously enough, this is a primitive form of the cantilever principle; and although Sir John Fowler and Sir Benjamin Baker did not model their design for the Forth Bridge from those in the extreme East, yet they frankly acknowledge these Himalayan bridges as being the early prototype of their more modern idea'. From "Illustrated London News", 1895.