Previous to the experiments of 1865, Mr. Fell gave a programme to both the French and Italian Governments of the manner in which he proposed to carry the traffic on the line when opened. Considering that three trains per day in each direction would be sufficient, at all events for the existing traffic, he divided his service into two for passengers, one of which should also carry goods, and one for goods only. The train conveying passengers without goods, should also be the mail train, and he proposed that its weight, exclusive of engine, should not exceed 16 tons. The speed of this train to be about 11½ miles an hour including stoppages; the mixed train to weigh 40 tons, but its speed not to exceed 7 to 8 miles an hour; the goods train to weigh 48 tons, and its speed to be 6 miles an hour. When Mr. Fell submitted these proposals, he estimated a certain weight for each of his engines, and each of his carriages and waggons, but unfortunately the weight of all three has been much exceeded in the construction of the rolling stock. The engines instead of weighing about 17 tons each, as expected, will weigh upwards of 21 tons, and there is a corresponding increase in the weight of the vehicles. The consequence is that although these additional weights do not affect the question as to the power of trains to cross the mountain, it very materially affects a most important point—that of proportion between dead, and paying and productive weight. It is obvious that the problem of adhesion being solved by the addition of the centre rail, every pound added unnecessarily to the weight of the engine increases dead weight, without affording the corresponding benefit of carrying increased weight that brings profit and benefit to the shareholders. In this respect, the case between the Fell engine and the case of an ordinary engine for ascending a steep gradient is, that with the former additional weight is an incubus—an impedimentum—a break put upon the power of the engine without the slightest counterpoising or balancing advantage, whereas the ordinary engine, by increased weight, adds to its power, at all events to some extent, by the additional adhesion it obtains. It is therefore to be regretted that in laying down the plan for these engines, this most essential point was not more carefully—we might almost say more jealously—looked after. The same point bears, though in a less important degree, upon the weight of the carriages and waggons, for it is obvious that if a vehicle weighing, say, 3 tons (we take the figure at random) will carry safely, efficiently, and without strain upon any part of it, a given load, any weight beyond 3 tons is surplusage—not only unnecessary but most injurious. If anything tarnish the success of the Mont Cenis Railway, it is more likely to be from this cause than from any other that we are acquainted with, as the fact is undoubted that the weights are much in excess of what are required for the tractive power of the engines or for the safe conveyance of the loads that will be placed in the carriages and waggons behind them.[122]
CHAPTER XII.
TUNNELS, ANCIENT AND MODERN.
It is hardly necessary to say that the great rival to the Mont Cenis or Summit Railway is the railway that is to be laid through the tunnel, which, in the official documents of both France and Italy is denominated “The Great Tunnel of the Alps.” But before we enter upon the description of this tunnel, an account of subterraneous construction from the earliest period we have been able to trace tunnels, may not be uninteresting.
Tunnelling through hills and mountains is not exactly “as old as the hills,” but the practice, nevertheless, is of great antiquity.[123] Yet, the oldest tunnel of which we have record was neither through hill nor mountain, but was carried beneath the course of the River Euphrates. This happened no less than 4,812 years ago, for it was at that time that Semiramis was appointed by her dying husband, Ninus, King of Assyria, Regent and guardian to their only child, the infant Ninias. The royal widow, according to Diodorus the Sicilian, the most trustworthy historian of antiquity, who has written of the peoples that existed earliest after the world’s creation, commenced her reign 2,944 years before the birth of Christ, and immediately afterwards, the building of Babylon was begun, by two millions of men, who had been collected, by regal command, from all parts of the empire. The mighty city was erected on the two sides of the Euphrates, on each bank of which was raised a palace of colossal proportions. These the Queen Regent connected together by “a passage under the river,[124] in the nature of a vault, from one palace to another, whose arches were built of firm and strong brick, and plastered all over on both sides with bitumen, four cubits thick. The walls of this vault were twenty bricks in thickness, and twelve feet high, and the breadth was fifteen feet. This piece of work was finished in 220 days, and the river flowing over the vault. Semiramis could thus go from one palace to the other without passing over the river. She made likewise two brazen gates at either end of the vault, which continued to the time of the Persian empire.” The passage was made, not by the process of tunnelling as we now understand it, but by first making enormous works for diverting the course of the Euphrates; then restoring it to its ancient channel as soon as the vaulted passage had been completed. The investigations of Mr. A. H. Layard, M.P., from 1846 to 1851, show that the process of making underground connections was fully understood from the earliest period of Assyrian history.
The ancient Egyptians were undoubtedly masters of the art of tunnelling. In a very interesting letter received from our much valued friend George Groves, Esq., the secretary of the Palestine Exploration Fund, enclosing the recent reports of Lieutenant Warren, R.E., the writer says, “you will see by Warren’s papers that there is no lack of tunnels at Jerusalem; in fact, the whole of the rock upon which the city is built, appears to be honeycombed with them, but of what exact age they are, it is impossible for us as yet to tell.”
The further reports of Lieutenant Warren cannot fail to be looked for and read with an all-absorbing interest by every lover of biblical literature and history. Already his researches and discoveries show that he is a man with whom his countrymen may well be satisfied. True type of the Englishman, he is earnest, indefatigable, and enduring; incapable of fatigue, he never knows what it is to be beaten. His ordinary work extends not only throughout the day with a temperature varying from 100 to 107, but also far on towards midnight. But at that period of the 24 hours, the Lieutenant says, “the temperature is much cooler.” That is, the thermometer falls to about 80! Recently when having “an attack of incipient fever and not being able to shake it quite off,” he with his faithful assistant and humble companion in all his labours and anxieties, Sergeant Birtles, “who was also very unwell,” went for a three days’ ride through Faghur, &c. “We returned on Saturday quite recovered!” Twelve or thirteen hours a day in the saddle for three successive days, is rather a rough remedy for the cure of fever.
We limit ourselves to two extracts from the reports; the first relates to a discovery made as recently as the 1st of September last, which may be truly described as one of very great importance.