Willmar tribune. [volume] (Willmar, Minn.) 1895-1931, 1907-01-23


$780, q e
There is revival of the project of
building tunnel under the straits of
Dover to connect France with Eng
land, and there is now more than a
likelihood that the great engineering
task first seriously proposed by the
eminent Frenchman, M. Thome de
Gamond, over 20 years ago, will some
day me contaminated.
Geologically speaking, there was
quite recently dry land where now the
turbulent waters of the straits dis
port themselves and make the hours
OF the voyager unhappy, and the
palaeolithic Briton, on pleasure bent,
took advantage of the entene cordiale
of those far off days and ran over to
the continent for the weekend dry
shod, and spent a pleasant holiday
swapping flint instruments for carved
mammoth ivory with the cave
jewellers in the valley of the Somme-
the great art emporium of the period.
This happy state of things, however,
ceased about the time when Neolithic
man appeared, and since then CON-
munication has had to be maintained
by boat-whether by coracle or Calais
Douvres. Yet there were ever some
bold spirits who dreamt of restoring
by art what had been torn from us
hv oofur0 or1 Nuor ~ roo oo %hooo
visions crystallized in the mind of an
eminent Frenchman, M. Thome de
Gamond, who has been well named
''The Father of the Channel Tunnel"
Others before him had toyed with the
| idea; with de Gamond it was the de-
vouring passion of lifetime. For 20
years his fertile brain devised scheme
after scheme-tube, bridge and tun-
nel-and he won the sympathy and
support of both Queen Victoria and
the prince consort. He even dared
to beard Lord Palmerston. whose re-
ply was characteristics: What! you
pretend to ask us to contribute to
a work whose object is to shorten a
distance which we already find too
short!" and when the prince consort
expatiated on the advantages of the
scheme, Pam cut him short with the
discourteous remark: "You would
think quite differently If you had been
born in this island" To such pitch
of enthusiasm was de Gamond carried
that he repeatedly dived to the bottom
of the straits to obtain specimens of
the geological formation, and on one
occasion he was attacked by conger
cells, and narrowly escaped death.
His daughter to this day receives a
modest pension from the French
Channel company.
| That company was founded in 1875,
one of the directors being M. Raoul
Duval, and in the same year the Eng
lish Channel Tunnel company, formed
in 1872, began experimental opera
lions at St. Margaret's bay, east of
were not successful, and in 1881 the
Southeastern railway obtained par
liamentary powers to make borings at
Shakespeare Cliff. A shaft was sunk
to depth of 100 feet, and tunnel
seven feet in diameter was driven for
mile and a quarter under the sea-
bed, subsidiary shafts being also sunk
at Abbot's Cliff and on the Dover side
of Shakespeare Cliff for the purpose
of ventilation and drainage. In the
following year the works were taken
over by the Submarine Continental
Railway company, formed with cap
ital of $1,250,000-s subsequently in
creased, in 1886, to $1,375,o0o, to buy
out the original company, the name of
the new venture being changed to
"The Channel Tunnel Company, Linn.
ited." In the meantime, the "Societe
Franchise du Tunnel Sous-marin,' -
working from their starting-point at
Sangatte, few miles west of Calais,
had sunk two shafts to depth of 1S0
feet and constructed gallery for a
distance of 1900 yards, using, like the
English engineers, the Beaumont drill,
which excavated at the rate of quar-
ter of mile per month. The French,
moreover, in 1876 and 1877, had made
a careful study of the whole line OF
the tunnel, making 1900 soundings
and collecting over 5000 geological
specimens from the bottom of the sea-
Matters were progressing thus sat
isfactorily on both sides of the chan
mel when suddenly, like bolt from
the blue, a panic seized upon the Eng
lish nation. In July, 1882, an applica
,.0he,>.a.Qnrsa-a.Q Nrss->sQn ~ss>s1