The New York herald., 1870-12-28


n1eat Cent. Perforased-The Great Alpine
Tunnel q SUcress.
The first and by far the most difficult
stadium in the completion of the enterprise
that is to roll the southwark travel and COM
merce of Northern Europe through the very
heart OF the Alps has been accomplished. AS
dispatches from Susa, In Italy, published un-
der our special telegraphic head this morning
will inform our readers, the last thin screen of
rock that closed the oriice was perforated
gratulations Of the engineers and workmen
employed on both sides of the barrier.
Thus has another obstacle in the way of
progress and international communication
been removed, and thus, too, has the Christ
mas season OF lS7O-of this wonderful twelve
month which we have already called s'thc
year OF reconstructon"-be fitly celebrated
among the wild Alpine passes and caverns
The world is already familiar enough with
the Mont Gems undertaking not to require
from us in this place any minutely detailed
description. The HERALD sent a special cor
and about one month later published his CON-
plete statement, historical and Typographical,
OF the whole affair, along with o chart of the
neighborhood and the line of the proposed tuu-
mel. The sketch in question was at the time
so exhaustive as to need few additions, ex-
cepting in simply technical point of view.
This morning we have merely the outline Of
this stupendOus achievement Of science and
peraevering labor to recall and the public to
fecitate upon it.
Since the days when Hannibal cleft pas
sage for his invading armies through the Alps
by the use of chemical solvents roundly
summed up by name in the one word vinegar,
il we are to believe the somewhat mythical
narratives of his time, the Alpine chain has
been the chief stumbling block in the way of
general European traffic. Once serving as
shield to weak Powers against aggression, 1t
long since ceased to be so in the presence Of
steam and rided artillery for the one could
turn its TANKS with iron-clad men-of-war
and the other could hurI shot and shell
into its recesses and far up on its
rugged sides. Engineer after engineer had
studied the problem of the Alps in successive
ages, and the means of easy transit over them
had been planned after a thousand patterns.
II was only in the time of lhe First Napoleon,
whose reign was crowded with grand concep-
tons, that the great passes of the st. Gothard,
the st. Bernard and the Simplon were made
the splendid highroads of travel that so long
excited the admiration Of Europe. But as
ideas expanded, relations increased, new loco
motive forces were developed and time began
TO be gsuged by hours and minutes where it
had previously been measured by weeks and
days. Austria, anxiously concerned for the
trade as well as for the military subjection of
her Italian possessions, began to cast about
for swiftcr and better access to Lombardy
than her cooperation with the French had
given her, and her schemes set the Sandman
government on the alert. A great struggle
for Italian independence was evidently prepar-
ing, and in the meanwhile Italian commerce
yearned for new outlets. Charles Albert, King
through the Alps from his own into French
territory as early as 1S42 and, in the
presence Of the railways that were shooting
forth in all directions, above and be-
low the great mountains, the thought
seemed less chimerical than it had appeared
ten years earlier. But it required the genius
Of Cavour to give it visible life, and only the
improving fortunes of his country, aided by
the ambition of Northern merchants and states
men (these terms are sometimes synOny-
mous) emboldened its projectors to 60 ac-
tually to work with the enterprise. A COM
mission Of three thoroughly able engineers
was entrusted with the preliminary studies,
and, after long and minute examination, they
selected Fourneaux, in the narrow valley of
the river Arc, in Savoy, as the French termi-
nus Of the excavation, and Bardonneche, in
the Piedmontese valley Of the Dora, as the
Italian end. Between these two points, the
one looking westward to the sweep Of the river
Iscre, in France, and the other turned east
ward to the Pc, in Italy, the barrier Of rock to
be pierced was only about twelve kilometres,
or, in closer terms, IL. 22O metres-7. 1892 Eng
lsh miles-takng the shortest possible line.
This work began after the old-fashioned
method Of pick, spade, bar and basket in the
spring of 1853, and it was not until June l2,
1861, that perforating machine was set in
play in the gallery at Bardonn6che, on the
italian side, and only on the 25th of January,
1863, that real excavation commenced on the
Savoy side at Fourneanx.
The intervening time had been spent in con-
structing and improving machinery, collecting