THE STORY OF A GREAT WORK. 463 



do the most good, or at least where it would not be used to kindle 

 the kitchen fire. 



The above suggestions refer solely to those reports which tend 

 to the advancement of human learning, and, printed and distrib- 

 uted freely as they are by the nation, should reach in every case 

 those who stand most in need of them. 



-- 



THE STORY OF A GREAT WORK. 



By J. JONES BELL. 



ON the 19th of September, 1891, Sir Henry Tyler, President of 

 the Grand Trunk Railway Company, presided at the in- 

 auguration of one of the greatest engineering achievements of the 

 present day, bold in conception, new in design, and novel in many 

 of the methods adopted in its construction. Without the St. 

 Clair Tunnel the immense stream of traffic from the East, which 

 during last summer flowed to the World's Columbian Exposition 

 at Chicago, could not have been successfully handled. 



Previous to the construction of the tunnel, connection between 

 the Grand Trunk Railway and the Western roads with which it 

 exchanges traffic was maintained by a ferry, the loaded cars being 

 carried across on the deck of a powerful steamer, specially built 

 for the purpose. Adopted for want of a better, this service was 

 never satisfactory. Though the swift current, where Lake Huron 

 pours its entire volume through a narrow outlet, prevents the 

 river freezing in winter, ice blocks occasionally occurred, and a 

 single day's interruption to traffic involved serious inconvenience 

 and loss. A bridge had often been suggested, but it was always 

 successfully opposed by the vessel interest. A larger number of 

 vessels, with a greater tonnage, pass up and down the St. Clair 

 River during the season of navigation than through the Suez 

 Canal in a year. A high-level bridge is impossible, and a draw 

 would be attended with great interruption to traffic, and danger 

 to vessels on account of the current. The only alternative 

 seemed to be a tunnel. Its completion not only affords a better 

 crossing, but establishes the possibility of such a work being suc- 

 cessfully and economically built and worked where favorable 

 conditions exist. The story of its construction is an interesting 

 one. 



The tunnel is really a large iron tube, twenty feet in diameter 

 and six thousand and twenty-six feet long, buried under the river, 

 but considerable ingenuity was required to place it there. In 

 1884 Mr. Joseph Hobson, the chief engineer of the work, and Mr. 

 Hillman, his assistant, made a survey of the river, one mile be- 



