A WONDERFUL TUNNEL.

Inangahua Times, Volume XI, Issue 1647, 1 January 1886, Page 2

A WONDERFUL TUNNEL.

U ud«T tho sensational title of " 8000 Perspu-i»g Minoi-8 Drilling a Un»e Hole Tlivotigh 28 Miles of Solid Rock," tlirf A.I Herald says of the tunnel now being cotistruct-'d to supply New York with water : Depp down under the rustling corn-fields, g"e«*n meadows, anil peaceful wooda, by the faint yellow light an iiinuiii ra')!e smoky lumps and th» intermittent cold gleaming from white electric lights, GOOO grimy men are toiling night and clay so that the water supply for New York may flow through 28 miles of solid ruck. It never ceases, this grinding and cranking and whirring and dull booming of powder explosion, save for two hours out of the 24, when 30)0 men drowsily crawl out of the dim shafts on the smface of the earth to eat thfir meat and bread and go to sleep, while. 8000 other tnon take their places. Since the tirst of the year these cod, trickling caverns and shafts have been drilled and blasted continuously. Hundreds of powerful steam-drills, driven by streams of compressed air from wonderful shining engines, eat into tl»:» hard rock like so many steel pamsities, and mountains of torn gneiss and shining mica have been piled up around th« shafts as the. work went ou. In two years from next September a tunnel of 31 miles will stretch from Ooto?i Pa.rk, through the b»jek and Btcm« liniog ofwfiich will gush a body of crystal water more than enough to supply the metropolis plenteously. Fi>r all tho blessings ( and the proud distinction of owning the longest rock tunnel m the. world, the city will have to pay at least $33,000,000, or perhaps, $60,000,000. The Mont Cennis tunnel is seven and a half miles long, and cost about $15,000,000, while the St. Gothard tunnel is nine and a quarter miles long and cost very little more. Few people in the city have any idea of the marvelous rapidity with which tht aqueduct tunnel is being made. Over 8000 men are employed in the work > — 0000 underground and 2000 ou the surface. At the bottom of the shafts the miners work in two directions, I so while one set of men are drilling southward there i» a set of men in I another «hafb working northward to meet them. These shafts are aboot one mile apart, yet so delicate and accurate ar« the plans of the engineers that in no XtS*, they declare, will the line of the tunnel be nioretlnm one inch out of way when the miners in the different tunnel* meet each other underground. "^