ST. GOTTHARD TUNNEL.
VITZNAU ON LAKE LUCERNE.
Still, whether we travel by the railroad of the St. Gotthard or not, we must not underrate its usefulness, nor belittle the great engineering triumphs here displayed. Its length, too, amazes one, for not only is the principal tunnel nine and a half miles long, but there are fifty-five others on the line, the total length of which, cut inch by inch out of the solid granite, is more than twenty-five miles. When one drives over the mountain by the carriage-road, hour after hour, bewildered by its cliffs and gorges, it seems impossible that the engineer's calculations could have been made so perfectly as to enable labor on the tunnel to be carried on from both ends of it at the same time. Yet all was planned so well that, on the 28th of February, 1880, the Italian workmen and the Swiss both met at the designated spot, six thousand feet below the summit, and there pierced the last thin barrier that remained between the north and south.
A PORTION OF THE ST. GOTTHARD.