The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1870-12-28

brought into requisition. The ordinary motive
power, steam, could not be employed in opera
ting these machines, as steam needs fire for its
generation, and fire needs air for its support.
After long deliberation and countless expert
ments, compressed air was employed.
The machine is composed of seventeen or
eighteen iron tubes, in which, by vibrating
motion caused by the rise and fall of water, and
regulated by pistons in the tubes, the air is COM
pressed to one-sxth its natural bulk. This
when released exercsers an expansive force
equal to that OF six atmospheres. As the piston
ascends it forces the water up compressing the
air and driving 1t into reservoirs as it descends
valve is opened near the top, through which
the air rushes into the vacuum, and is in turn
compressed and forced into the reservoir.
From the reservoir large iron pipe conveys
the compressed air into the tunnel. Ten of
these perforators were kept constantly at werk
The drills working by the compressed air were
kept constantly boring the rock at the rate
nine feet day. The perforators were not inf
troduced into the tunnel at Fourneaux, on tn
French side, until 1868, two years after they had
been in use on the Italian side.
THE ENTRANCE TO THE TUNNEL
is 25 feet wide and as many In height. During
the progress of the work, double railway
track ran into the tunnel, carrying the imple-
ments and the stone for the mason work and
bringing cut the fragments of broken and
blasted rock. A temporary wooden partition
divided the tunnel into two equal galleries
above and below; the rarifed air from the
lower gallery rising and passing out through
the upper, and fresh air coming into the lower
to supply its place.
For some time after the work was begun
visitors were admitted at all times, but as the
work progressed, stricter rules were adopted,
and permission was given to inspect the work
only on two fixed days of the month. The
visitor is taken in charge by the director of the
workmep, who gets him a long india-rubber
coat and lighted lamp attached to half a yard
of wire and with these they set out upon their
journey.
INTO THE BOWELS OF THE EARTH.
After going some distance the patch OF day
light furnished by the entrance is lost sight Of
and the darkness seems positively tangible.
Ahead through the blackness glimmer number
of lights, and the rumbling sounds of the wagon
carrying out the debris is heard. Then comes
dull, heavy rumble, echoing and re-echoing
through the gallery, and seeming to shake the
mountain from base to summit. 1t is the sound
! of an explosion.
One follows another in rapid succession, and,
| after seven or eight, the wooden doors, which
are closed just before the blast, are thrown open,
and clouds of yellow smoke come pouring
| through the tunnel in such density and volume
| as to be positively painful. At the time of the
| completion of the tunnel the worlmen from the
| italian side had bored AZ miles into the noun
! tain, and those from the French side about 8
| miles, the whole distance being Z 4-5 miles.
FOUR MILES FROM THE OUTER WORLD,
! and with more than mile of Alps towering
above their heads, the visitors find the men and
machines at work. The drills make two hun
| urea revolutions minute, ana ScaIJer lnnu
merable sparks of fire from the rock. After
! about ninety holes, three feet in depth and two
| to three inches in diameter are bored, they are
charged with powder and tamped, when-the
miners Withdrawing behind the wooden doors
| the slow match is ignted and the explosion
| takes place. SO the labor has continued with.
| out interruption, day and night, week after
week, including Sundays, month after month
| year after year. The workmen were divided
into three reliefs, eight hours being given t
| labor and sixteen to rest. The common laborer
received only three francs day, and the skilled
| but five francs.
| THE CASUALTIES.
| OF course, in such a work innumeraole acci
| dents must happen. 1t has been told tina
more than 1000 workmen have lost their lives VI
to $780, but the guides and directors declare
that not more than fifty or sixty had been killed
outright, though a number of others had beer
| seriously wounded. Most of the accidents hav
occurred on the railway, from the falling o
rock and from premature explosions. One pre-
mature explosion killed two men and wounde
nine others, three of them fatally; and one rocl
falling crushed three men to death. 1t is no
improbable, therefore, that during the twelv
years in which the work has been going on a
least 1000 men have lost their lives.
The cost of the tunnel has been abou
| 40, 900, 900 francs.
II n