difficulties that his most careful borings and soundings 

 had not developed. Neither had the previous drift 

 way of 1807 and 1808. 



The idea of carrying forward and completing as 

 they advanced the full size tunnel without an ad- 

 vance drift, was certainly a bold and grand concep- 

 tion of Mr. Brunei's, and when the difficulties did 

 occur, he had overcome them, and when all serious 

 ones to be apprehended had by actual experience 

 been provided for, he was shut down on, and the 

 work suspended entirely, in consequence of financial 

 difficulties. He said it was true that the cost so far 

 had greatly exceeded his estimates, but this might 

 partly be attributed to hue and cry of failure by engi- 

 neers who were envious and by experts without either 

 examination or knowledge. Every difficulty had been 

 magnified; any increase in steepage or change in 

 tenacity of the earth he was working through, the 

 least softening or invasion by streaks of old river silt 

 as they were encountered, were represented as insur- 

 mountable, and were made use of, alarming the 

 operatives; in some cases men refusing to go on with 

 their work. In this state of things a constant increase 

 in cost, in the shape of advance in wages, had to be 

 encountered. 



Mr. Brunei was suffering as bold pioneers in great 

 enterprises too often do; but it was evident he had 

 not lost confidence in himself or in the wisdom of the 

 plans he had adopted, or in ultimate success, whatever 

 the capitalists, the bone and sinew of the enterprise, 

 may have done. Young as I was, he seemed anxious, 

 and took much pains to impress me favorably as to 

 his plans and ultimate success of the enterprise. He 

 made light of the difficulties, and in no manner 

 boasted of his achievements in overcoming them. 

 But he laid great stress on the great additional cost 

 due to the suspension of the work, for had all that had 

 been and was being expended on the maintenance of 

 the work in its unfinished condition by continuous 



pumping, and other unavoidable outlays, been applied 

 to the direct prosecution of the work, it would have 

 been in a condition to disarm all skeptics. He was 

 quite complimentary to America when he said he 

 did not believe such a state of affairs could be brought 

 about in that go-ahead country. 



He based his hopes of completing the work on the 

 large sums of money that had been expended, that, 

 if abandoned, would be a total loss, and that, rather 

 than that, he believed the amount required to com- 

 plete would ultimately be raised, as the estimated cost 

 was then based on actual experience. Nearly half 

 the distance had been accomplished and at the time 

 the work was suspended the center of the river had 

 been reached. The time of my interview was about 

 seven years after the commencement of the work. 

 This fact alone is evidence of its great magnitude and 

 the constant strain on Mr. Brunei's brain. It is not 

 my intention to describe the work, for that has been 

 fully done and must be familiar to most engineers. 

 But I was much interested in the model of the great 

 sectional shield, and in Mr. Brunei's description of 

 the manner it was used to make the excavation of 38 

 feet in width by 26 feet 6 inches high under the bed 

 of the river, in which excavation was built as the 

 work progressed, the great double brick archways, or 

 arcades as they were called in England. 



Mr. Brunei gave figures of the cost of the work up 

 to the time of suspension, which, on reducing to our 

 currency, showed the cost to have been about S35 for 

 every cubic yard of earth removed — this included 

 work done, brick arches, etc. I give this entirely from 

 recollection; the amount was so strongly impressed 

 on my mind at the time, that I am satisfied it is correct 

 as we then figured it. After this Mr. Brunei again 

 referred to his statement of the accumulated expenses 

 during the suspension, showing from them what would 

 have been accomplished had they been applied on 

 progressive work. [44] 



115 



