ON LANDSLIPS. 



323 



Saint Gothard. — I may now conclude by some remarks 

 upon the St. Gothard Eailwaj^, which I visited in September, 

 1882, shortly after it had been opened. 



Starting from Lucerne, the railway runs up the valley of 

 the river E,euss. The day was fine, and in the bright sun- 

 shine the scenery, as we ascended the valley, was most 

 charming. In the upper parts this river becomes an im- 

 petuous mountain torrent, the clear, pale-green waters 

 dashing round the enormous granite blocks with great force, 

 and fifty feet below the narrow strip of bright-green allu- 

 vium which capped these rocks, with here and there a 

 picturesque pine or group of pines. All these in the bright 

 sunshine formed a most beautiful panorama as we puffed up 

 the gradient. 



But the most remarkable thing there Avas, perhaps, the 

 railway itself ; for at one spot, on looking ahead out of the 

 window, we could see, upon one shoulder of the mountain, 

 three distinct lines of railway rounding it, each 200 feet or 

 so above the other. Nobody could have believed that all 

 these were portions of one and the same railway ; but they 

 were. The fact is that, in ascending the valley, the river 

 gradient becomes much too steep for that of the railway, 

 and the engineer, consequently, in order to obtain his 

 gradient, has made a full circle of tunnel into the solid rock 

 of the mountain, like one turn of a corkscrew, and come out 

 again at a considerably higher level, according to his gra- 

 dient. There are, I believe, two or three of these corkscrew 

 tunnels on this incline, and this accounts for the peculiar 

 appearance I have mentioned. 



The St. Gothard tunnel was arched for a double line, 

 but excavated only for a single line, on the eastern side 

 of it. 



In descending the valley of the Ticino, on the Italian side, 



