The lower surface of the platforms should, in M. Oudry’s opinion, be 50 metres above high water, and to that elevation he proposes they should be carried. The towers of the piers being, say, 40 metres higher, the total pier elevation to be constructed, exclusive of foundations, would be about 200 metres, exactly half as high again as the top of the cross of St. Paul’s. Semiramis, after a repose of nearly 4,900 years, should be started into life again, together with her two millions of Assyrians. Her greatest elevation, however, was only 350 feet—the walls of Babylon—270 feet short of the piers of M. Oudry. To be sure the walls were said to be seventy miles long, and wide enough at top for five chariots.
Of the total length of railways contemplated and sanctioned for Sicily—347 miles, 82 are opened for traffic, of which 59½ are from Messina (passing in its course at the foot of Mount Etna) to Catania, in the direction of Syracuse; and 22½ from Palermo to Marsala. It is a striking illustration of the rapid development which takes place through the opening of railways in a fertile country, that the traffic receipts per mile on the Sicilian sections opened have, since the commencement of 1867, been at the rate of £640 per annum. The directors of the company consider (apparently with justice) this amount as indicating very satisfactory results for the future.
Whilst upon the railways in the extreme Southern Italy, we wish to mention a non-feasible theory that has been propounded to us during a visit we paid to Italy in July last. As England is to have her overland route to her Eastern possessions through Brindisi, why should not France find her way to Algeria by Reggio, and thence to Marsala, from which latter port the city of Tunis is only separated by some 90 miles of water? From Tunis to Constantine, and thence to Algiers, the measurement is 400 miles. But while the distance from Paris to Algiers, viâ Marseilles, is 1,100 miles, that viâ Reggio is 2,297, in which are comprised 500 miles of intended railway, the construction of which is not likely to be accomplished for several years to come.
“The world,” says the Pall Mall Gazette in its recent review of Alfred Von Reaumont’s Work, Geschichte der Stadt Rom,[144] “may be divided into those who have been to Rome, and those who wish to go there, with more or less of looming hope that the wish may be gratified.” For the wishful and the hopeful there are facilities that did not exist even twelve months ago. The “Roman Railways” Company is the second, both in length and importance on Italian soil, as it consists of 1,024 miles “en exploitation,” and by it, not only Rome, but Naples may be approached from the north, either viâ Florence or viâ Ancona, and there is a net-work of lines running farther south than Naples, which will ultimately join at the Sole of the Boot, with the Calabro-Sicilian Railways. Summed up, the railway mileage of the whole Italian Peninsula now open for traffic is 3,040 miles. There will be further openings of them, to the extent of about 250 miles before the end of 1868; but as regards lines projected, or to which even the words “en construction” may be applied, we must wait for their realisation until the whole system of Italian finance and of Italian credit has been put upon a more solid basis than that upon which it is at present founded. But thanks to railways as they now exist towards and in Italy, the traveller, bent on tip-top speed, can leave London on any morning of the week, and even now, before the opening of the Mont Cenis Railway is accomplished, he can reach Turin before the chimes of the innumerable, and not always correctly-going public clocks in that city have struck twelve the following night. Of these clocks it is said that a person knowing them well, may start on a perambulation through the city as the first commences striking twelve and complete a circuit in which he shall never be out of public clock hearing, just as that from which he started is striking one. “When the Mont Cenis Railway is opened, the traveller in search of haste can reach Turin in time to start that night for Florence, and arrive there at eight o’clock the following morning—forty-eight hours from London to Florence—What distance? 1,122 miles. Resting in the city for thirteen hours, he can proceed at 9.10 p.m. to Rome, the distance of which from Florence, 233 miles, he can accomplish in nine hours and twenty minutes, which includes Frontier Visa, both of luggage and of passport. If he be determined not to tarry at the Eternal City more than four hours, he can proceed on his way for Naples, 163 miles farther, and be there 21 hours after he has left Florence, and (including his 13 hours pause there) 44 after he has left Turin, 70 after he has left Paris, 83 after he has left London; from which Naples is distant by railway measurement exactly 1,518 miles.
The railway distance from Florence to Rome will be lessened some thirty miles by the opening early next year of the line viâ Orvietto. It will also, of course, lessen to the same extent the journey between Florence and Naples, but in some years hence the railway between Southern and Northern Italy, avoiding Florence altogether, will be shortened by 93 miles, that is, when two unfinished portions of line along the west coast of Italy, one between Genoa and Spezzia 57 miles, and the other, the portion of the line between Civita Vecchia and Leghorn, nearest to the former, 36 miles, are completed. The works required upon these lines will be extremely heavy and extremely costly. How the money is to be found for them passes even conjecture, at the time of our present writing.
“Vede Napoli e mori.” We have seen her; we obey the injunction, and we depart in peace with but one word on dying lips,
Finis.