The Dorset County Express and Agricultural Gazette.
Dorchester, Dorset, England, 1876-11-14 00:00:00

AN AMERICAN_ CELEBRITY,

Edward Stokes, the murderer of James Fisk, was
released on the 28th ult. from Auburn Prison, New
York, his commuted sentence of three years' impri-
sonment having expired. Previous to his liberation,
however, Stokes was interviewed in the usual manner.
" How do you feel, Ed. r inquired the New York
Herald reporter of "the man who stood three trials
for murder, and whose expenses—lawyers' fees and
other items, including his final verdict—have amoun-
ted in five years to over 300,000 dols." "Ed." did not
"feel well at all," and complained bitterly of the
hardships he had endured in prison, and especially of
his recent removal from Sing-Sing to Auburn, with
his hands and feet in irons. He was, it appears,
treated with great severity at Auburn, the warder of
which prison stated that " he had been compelled to
be strict with Stokes, owing to the attacks of small
fry local sheets of a partisan and political character
who have not hesitated to assert that he had been in
the habit of granting favours to Stokes which he had
refused to others." The health of this notorious in-
dividual is greatly broken, but, according to his sym-
pathetic interviewer, his circumstances will be
prosperous, his mother having carefully looked after
the business daring his imprisonment. He has,
besides, speculated in the interim, awl is now the
owner of a very valuable patent, which be purchased
while in Sing-Sing from a convict, for paving—not
with good intentions, but with oblong slabs, the com-
position of which is a secret. —Echo.

THE CHANNEL TUNNEL
For how many years has the notion of a Channel
Tunnel been before the world; how much has been said
and written about this scheme and that scheme; until at
last all the wild and all the possible schemes have alike
settled down into the only one practicable—if any be
practicable at all—to bore • tunnel through the grey
chalk, • good thick, water impervious stratum, in the
ordinary manner of railway tunnels This scheme, under
Sir John Ilawkshaw on the English side and M. La Vallee
on the French side, appeared, more than a year ago, to he
making substantial progress, and we heard of three rail-
way companies ready to furnish their contingents of
£20,000 • piece, and an English company equally ready to
collect the remaining portion of the 1988,000. Sir John
Hawkshaw requires for the trial works which it was at
that date contemplated proceeding with forthwith at St.
Margaret's Bay, three or four miles to the East of Dover.
What is the progress up to date f On the English side
less than nothing—retrogression. Lord Richard Gros-
venor and the English company, abiding by the advice of
their engineers, Sir John Rawkshaw and Mr. Brunlees,
have clung to the £BO,OOO trial works at Dover, involving a
shaft of 19 feet in diameter, colonial pumping engines, and
a &if tway under the sea of seven feet square Sir Edward
Watkin, with a vote of ammo in his pocket on behalf
of the South-Eastern Railway, very properly looks that
the sum in his custody should be employed for the
benefit of the shareholders whose property he represents,
and is willing only to part with some few thousands at
a time for smaller trial works to make • shaft of seven
or eight feet diameter, less pumping power, and as mode-
rate a driftway under the sea as can well be driven.
Clearly this would realise knowledge with a minimum of
expenditure; and there can he lltUe doubt that such •
shalt could be driven and a suitable draftway carried a
third of a mile under the sea and water pumped to the
quantity of 500,000 gallons • day for £20,000. If, then,
Sir Edward Watkin contributed £5,000 on the part of the
South Eastern Railway, as it is understood he is willing to
do, then the three other contributories doing the like
would furnish the means for a trial of real value, and
which would determine as far as • first practical effort
could accomplish the probability of the engineering work
of the Channel Tunnel being possible of accomplishment.
If the magnitude of the expenditure were increased
another £lO,OOO, there could be almost certainly got for
the £30,000, outlay an 8-feet shaft and suitable pumping
gear for a million gallons of water per day from • 6-feet
drif tway of half-a-mile under the sea. Possibly Sir John
Hawkshaw may have been frightened by the volume of
the springs he has encountered in the mile and-a-half of
sewage drains along the shore of Brighton; but the flow
of water through the fissures of the white chalk there
does not appear to us to be • criterion at all for the
prospects in • non-water hearing stratum like the grey
so unlike in every way to both the white chalks
above it, and the water from which it holds up on its
surface, and so throws off the waters of both by any
available outlet rather than let them through its sub-
.

Maim RethsAilde and the London. Chatham, and
Dover Railway would seem either to have withdrawn
their influence or to hold aloof, and so the matter on the
English side remains at • dead lock.
On the French side there has been quiet and steady
onward movements on a small but useful scale. The
dredging. of Sir John Hawkshaw on the French aide were
confirmed and enlarged by IL Ls Vallee and his etaff
some time ago, and • report made by him of considerable
value in September last year. Since then the English sea
bottom of the Channel has been sounded and similar con-
firmations and extended knowledge obtained, and •
boring has been commenced and is just fituahed at
f!langatte, about six or seven miles west of Calais.
This boring and its results are the latest attainments,
and as exact details are reserved for the second report of
N. La Vallee, now in preparation, we must wait a little
while to learn how far the chief French engineer has
really advanced. What is known from a visit to the
works at Sinatra is that the boring there was com-
menced on the upper white chalk at somewhat lose than
half its thickness, haa penetrated the lower white
and gone through about 66 metres of grey chalk, identicallisll
in its beds and fossils and characters with the grey chalk
on the English coast between Abbot's Cliffs and Folke-
stone ; and that it has further penetrated into the gault
day after mailing a thin band of dark green upper green
sand, the total depth of the boring—which was effected
by the ordinary iron gouges and chisels—being 133
metres, and the diameter 24 centimetres, or about el
inches. We know therefore now, quite independently
of the shore sections, the nature and mass of the stratum
in which the tunnel is to be pierced, and of the beds
immediately above and below it; and that although the
thickness of theme all diminish towards the French coast,
yet they are of sufficient magnitude for the engineering
requirements of the submarine tunnel; and this notwith-
standing that the geological series underlying these beds,
or those represented on the English coast between Hythe
and Hastings, are all rolled up together in strata of only
a comparatively few feet in aggregate thickness in the
vicinity of Boulogne. Coupling with the exact details of
M. La Valero's last boring at Sangatte itself, Sir John
Hawkshaves previous boring midway between that
village and of Calais itself, and the boring there made in
the market-place many years ago for an artesian well, the
dip and inclinations of these most important goolwical
formations—the white and grey chalks and gault—will be
accurately ascertained.
All this, however, neither proves or disproves the
hostile theories which have long assisted and still exist
as to the occurence of a vertical fissure along the whole
median line of the English Channel, and which discussion
will only be really settled when the dnftways or the
tunnel itaelf are actually driven trona the shores of both
countries and about to meet midway, under the bottom
of the sea. That even this stupendous difficulty, if it
really exist, will not be surmounted by the engineering
skill of the 19th century we should be very loth to say.
Nevertheless, every traveller by the fast mail steamers of
the Dover and Calais line must certainly realise at every
steam-boat voyage the length of distance between even
the nearest points of England awl France ; and, perhape,
may hope, if sensitive to the weal de mer, for the days of
darkness and steam-clouds under the sea In preference to
the stormy winds and boisterous waves he has to endure
ripen its surface.

The personal estate of the late Mr. Justice Archibald has
been sworn under £7,1.100.
ARREST or • CONSUL—Mr. William Forster, Belgian
Consul at Dover, was arrested in London by the super-
intendent of the local police. Mr. Forster recently
failed, his liability being over £12.000. Before the
Bankruptcy Registrar certain statements were made as to
the removal of plate, &c., after his affairs were in liquida-
tion. He refused to answer any questions, and next day
he had left for London, where he has been followed and
apprehended.
STRANGE TERMINATION OP • STAG HONS.-1101VMM
three and four p.m., the other afternoon, considerable
surprise was caused in the suburb of Hammersmith by
the sudden appearance of • fine stag careering down the
Shaftesbury-road, closely pursued by three hounds in
chase. Neither huntsmen nor other hounds appeared in
sight The hunted animal continued its course past the
Hammersmith Wesleyan Chapel down Rivercourt-road,
where it leaped a high wall, alighting in the premises of
an adjacent house, and then clearing two more walls, of
not less than five feet each, in succession, it stood at by
In the corner of • piece of ground in the rear of an
natural/bed house. By this time the huntsmen with the
remainder of the pack had come up, and the stag was
captured and taken to the stables of the adjacent tavern,
where it was safely lodged. It appears that the hounds
had to met at Stanmore Marsh, and (with the stag) are
the property of Mr. Nurse, of Coiling Dale. The ran
seems to have been a good one of about IS miles, mostly
across country.
BISHOPRIC 01 TRUMO.--Lady Rolle has transferred
£40,000. Throe per Cent Consols to the Ecclesiastical
Commissioners, and the promoters of the Cornish bishopric
have purchased sufficient debenture stock to produce the
additional C. 50. a year required by the Act In the first
instance; and, further, the form of guarantee for the
second .C. 500 a year has been arreed upon, and is in course
of signature by the guarantors. The whole arrangement
will, unless any unforeseen hindrance should arise, be com-
pleted at the next meeting of the Ecclesiastical CUM.
missionera The commissioners will then he in a position
to give the "certificate of sufficient endowment"
required by the 4th section of the Act, and upon which
her by Order in Council, may found the new
—lllo6a

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