After a period of intensive measuring and planning, the team proceeded to raise an arch over the first channel. It did not hold. “At the moment the Arch fell,” Burrowes recorded...

"Mr. John McTaggart [sic], Mr. MacKay, Mr. John Burrows and Self were standing upon a flat piece of rock immediately below the bridge, and not more than twelve feet from the side of it. Providentially, none of us were struck by the flying pieces of broken timber. The mortar that had fallen from the Arch made the water in the ‘Little Kettle’ white as milk and the splash from it ruined our clothing. Whatever Mr. McTaggart’s real sentiments may have been, he appeared to make light of the matter; for, after we had wiped the mortar or grout off our faces, he exclaimed: ‘Egad, boys! We maun e’en big her up again.’ Doubtless he said this to cheer up Mr. MacKay, who stood appalled. We then returned to the Hotel for Breakfast, after which Mr. MacKay hastened to Montreal to impart the disastrous tiding to Lieut.-Col. By, who gave orders to have the work recommenced forthwith."

A wooden truss bridge was built with great difficulty across the Chaudière Falls (painted in 1831).