Under the Restoration it was decided to utilize the deserted foundations and to erect thereon a barrack. The laying of the cornerstone of the new edifice was made the occasion of a solemn festival in honor of the successes of the French army in Spain. The day chosen was the anniversary of the taking of the fort of the Trocadéro at Cadiz by the duc d'Angoulême, and the better to mark the occasion the height on which the new barrack was to stand was solemnly rebaptized by the name of the fort in question. The programme of the fête was long and elaborate. It consisted of a representation of the taking of the Trocadéro, a sham battle in which twenty battalions of the royal guard took part. Then came the laying of the cornerstone, which duty was performed by the dauphin and dauphiness. But the projected barrack of the Bourbons shared the fate of the palace of Napoleon. It was never built, and for nearly thirty years the ruins of the abandoned foundations and terraces were left to be picturesquely clothed with weeds and wild grasses. Only the name bestowed upon the height remained, and it was still called the Trocadéro.
Under the Second Empire the laying out of the numerous handsome avenues which extend around the Arc de Triomphe, and have it for a centre, necessitated the clearing and levelling of the deserted site. It was at first proposed to erect there a monument in commemoration of the victories of Magenta and Solferino, and the plans were actually drawn up: it was to have consisted of a lofty column, surpassing in its dimensions any similar monument in Paris. At the base of this column a fountain and a vast cascade were to be constructed, and the slope was to have been laid with turf and planted with trees. But this project, too, came to naught, and the Exhibition of 1867 only impelled the authorities into grading and laying out the ground, strengthening and repairing the flights of steps that led to the summit, and embellishing it with grass-plats and flower-beds. Later, the project was conceived by Napoleon III. of erecting on the summit of the Trocadéro a Grecian temple in white marble, destined to receive the busts of the great men of France with commemorative inscriptions—a project which the downfall of the Second Empire found unrealized. The ancient site of the village of Chaillot seemed like one of those spots of which we read in monkish legends, which are haunted by a demon that destroys the work and blights the existence of whoever attempts to build upon them. Palace, barracks, monument and temple alike never existed, and were but the shadowy precursors of disaster to their projectors. It was reserved for the Third Republic to break the evil spell, and to crown the picturesque and historic eminence with an edifice worthy of the beauty of the site and of its associations with the past.
L. H. H.
SWISS ENGINEERING.
Switzerland, of all the countries of Europe, presents the most grave and numerous obstacles to intercommunication. The number and size of the mountains and glaciers, the depth of the valleys, the torrential character of the rivers,—everything unites to make the highways cost enormously in money, while the feats of skill they necessitate are "the triumph of civil engineers, the wonder of tourists, the despair of shareholders and the burden of budgets." Among these triumphs are the viaduct of Grandfey; the railroads that climb the Righi and the Uetliberg; the Axen tunnel and quay; and the Gotthard tunnel, over nine miles long—a solid granite bore through a mountain. One that was honored by a national celebration on the 16th of last August was the reclaiming from the water of the vast plain called Seeland, the territory occupying the triangle bounded by the river Aar and the Lakes of Bienne, Neufchâtel and Morat. It was wholly under water, and had slowly emerged after many centuries; but despite an extensive system of drainage the land was never dry enough for serious cultivation. In rainy years it was even covered with water, making, with the three lakes, a sheet nearly twenty-five miles square.
The great work celebrated last August was no less than the changing the bed of the Aar and the lowering of the three lakes mentioned. The Aar in this region is about the size of the Seine at Paris or of the Hudson at Troy, but it is subject to sudden floods that are the terror of dwellers and property-owners along its borders. A Swiss colonel named La Nicca was the author of the grand scheme for reclaiming Seeland. The proposition he made was accepted in 1867, and, thanks to the sacrifices of the citizens in the communes and cantons immediately interested, and also to a heavy national subsidy, the enterprise was commenced, and so vigorously and ably prosecuted that in ten years it was finished.
To-day the Aar, turned out of its ancient bed near Aarsberg, runs nearly west instead of north-east toward Soleure, and empties into Lake Bienne near its middle. The new bed or canal made for this river is over five and a half miles long, and some of the way it is three hundred and twenty-eight feet deep. But this is only a part of the work. Another vast canal, also over five and a half miles long, at the eastern extremity of the lake, not far from the pretty village of Bienne, receives the overflow not only of Lake Bienne, but of Neufchâtel and Morat, which are all three connected by broad canals, and are now in communication with the Rhine by steam navigation. The canal at the eastern extremity of Lake Bienne opens into the Aar some seven miles below where that river was cut off. It is in fact the bed of the river Thièle, deepened and reconstructed.
The deepening of the bed of the Thièle, the natural outlet of Lake Bienne, was effected according to principles that would ensure the lowering of the water-level of all the three lakes some ten feet! Thus a vast territory of swampy land, which once bore only reeds, now yields abundant harvests of grain and fruits. Of course the lowering of these three lakes had to be effected gradually, for the volume of water removed—no less than three thousand two hundred and eighty million cubic feet—represents a stupendous force. By this enterprise the whole plain of Seeland has become higher than the surface of the lakes, and consequently drains into them naturally. Already a beautiful village, Witzwyl, has sprung up, surrounded by some seven hundred and fifty thousand acres of fine arable land reclaimed from a forbidding, malaria-exhaling marsh.