John D. Billings, Hardtack and Coffee: The Unwritten Story of Army Life

[382] meaning a bridge, but it has now come to mean a boat, and the men who build such bridges are called by the French pontoniers. In fact, the system of ponton bridges in use during the Rebellion was copied, I believe, almost exactly from the French model.

The first ponton bridge which I recall in history was built by Xerxes, nearly twenty-four hundred years ago, across the Hellespont. It was over four thousand feet long. A violent storm broke it up, whereupon the Persian “got square” by throwing two pairs of shackles into the sea and ordering his men to give it three hundred strokes of a whip, while he addressed it in imperious language. Then he ordered all those persons who had been charged with the construction of the bridge to be beheaded. Immediately afterwards he had two other bridges built, “one for the army to pass over, and the other for the baggage and

The Fraise.

beasts of burden. He appointed workmen more able and expert than the former, who went about it in this manner. They placed three hundred and sixty vessels across, some of them having three banks of oars and others fifty oars apiece, with their sides turned towards the Euxine (Black) Sea; and on the side that faced the Aegean Sea they put three hundred and fourteen. They then cast large anchors into the water on both sides, in order to fix and secure all these vessels against the violence of the winds and the current of the water. On the east side they left three passages or vacant spaces, between the vessels, that there might be room for small boats to go and come easily, when there was ”