currents. The very passage of the trains will do a good deal. Besides this, there is already a large amount of ventilating power established at the two ends, and it can be kept in action at a small expense. I saw at the Fourneaux (Modane) mouth, on my last visit, the pumping-engines that had been set up about two years before. There were four cylinders, each 16 feet 4 inches in diameter, with a stroke of 6 feet 6 inches. Only two were at work, yet—at a distance of two miles from the mouth—they produced a very sensible current flowing into the tunnel, which was indicated by the miners' lamps that we carried. There is no reason to be afraid that the eminent engineer, who has hitherto shown himself equal to all the difficulties which have arisen, will be beaten by the ventilation.
M. Conte, at the conclusion of his pamphlet, pays a high tribute of praise to M. Sommeiller, and properly speaks of him as " the soul of the enterprise." " We may quote him as a model of courage and devotion If one may believe the companions of his youth, he followed the idea, which he now realises, at the time he was studying at the university of Turin. This idea he has never abandoned." Englishmen ought to be amongst the first to recognise his boldness and perseverance, although they have played no part in the execution of the tunnel.[1] It is the grandest conception of its kind, and when it is completed, it will be not only—in a double sense—one of the highways of Europe, but it will most likely become the high road to India.
It is humiliating to compare the working of our coal-mines with the operations carried on in the great tunnel of the Alps. In the former we see the old, barbarous, wasteful methods still employed, with disregard of human life, and for the future. In the latter, mechanical power, skilfully applied, economises labour, and gives safety and comfort to those who are at work. The exhaustion of
- ↑ The machinery has been principally made in Belgium; the engineers are French and Italians, and the subordinates, for the most part, Piedmontese and French.
