A Wonderful Tunnel.

Thames Star, Volume XVII, Issue 5287, 30 December 1885, Page 2

A Wonderful Tunnel.

Under the sensational title of " 6000 Perspiring Miners Drilling a Huge Hole Through 28 Miles of Solid Bock, I,' the N.Y. Heraldjays of the tunnel now being constructed to supply New York with water: Deep down under the rustling cornfields, green meadows, and peaceful woods, by the faint yellow light of innumerable smoky lamps and the inter* -mittent cold gleaming from white electric lights six thousand grimy men are toiling night and day so that the water supply for New York may flow through 28 miles of solid rock. It never ceases, this grinding and cranking and whirring and dull booming of powder explosions, save for two hours out of the 24, when tCOO men drowsily crawl out of the dim shafts on the surface of the earth to eat tbeir meat and bread and go to sleep, while 3000 other men take their placet. Since the first of the year these cold, trickling caverns and shafts hare been drilled and blasted continuously. Hun« dreds of powerful steam-drills, driven by streams of compressed air from wonderful shining engines, eat into the hard rock like so many steel parasites, and monntaint of torn gneiss and shining mica have been piled up arouod the shafts as the work went on. In two years from last September a tunnel of 31 miles will stretch from Croton Lake to the reser* voir in Central Park, through the brick and stone lining of which will gush a body of crystal water more than enovgh. to supply the metropolis plenteously. For all these blessings and the proud distinction of owning the longest rock tunnel in the world, the city will have to pay perhaps £12 000,000. The Mont Cennii tunnel is seven and a half miles long, aud cost about £3,000,000, while the St. Gothard tunnel is nine and a quarter miles long, and cost very little more.