THE MONT CENIS TUNNEL.

Westport Times, Volume V, Issue 784, 4 March 1871, Page 3

THE MONT CENIS TUNNEL.

The greatest engineering work of the century of engineering has at last been accomplished. The Mont Cenis Tunnel is perhaps a more wonderful triumph of genius and perseverance than the Atlantic Telegraph or the Suez Canal. Its length is seven miles and three-fifths, it is twenty-six feet and a quarter in width, aud nineteen feet eight inches in height, and will carry a double line of rails from France, under the Alps, to Italy. The tunnel, which is of course unfinished as yet, has been cut out by atmospheric machinery through the solid rock, schist, limestone, and quartz, the air which moved the chisels escaping from its compression to supply the lungs of the workmen. The work has been fifteen years in progress, without reckoning the time spent in preliminary investigations ; it has been carried on continuously from 1801 till now. The railway up the Sion Valley, will now, before long, carry its passengers straight through from Fourneaux to Bardoneche, and it will be possible to go from Paris to Milan without climbing au Alpine pass, or even changing the railway-carriage. So far as railway transit is concerned, there are, therefore, no more Alps. The great mountain chain has been finally removed. This immense work has been carried out under vast difficulties. There could be no shafts as in the short tunnels which pierce our little English hills, and all the debris had to be carried back to the entrance. It was begun at both ends, and the workmen who thus started seven miles apart, with a mountain chain between them, have met as accurately as though there had bees but a hill to pierce. As a triumph of engineering skill, we must mark this work as one of the new wonders of the world.