THE TUNNEL THROUGH MONT CENTS. 167 



Pacific can be held to evidence the working-power of 

 the individual coral polype. But if man, standing 

 alone, is weak, man working according to the law 

 assigned to his race from the beginning that is, in 

 fellowship with his kind is verily a being of power. 



Perhaps no work ever undertaken by men strikes 

 one as more daring than the attempt to pierce the Alps 

 with a tunnel. Nature seems to have upreared these 

 mighty barriers as if with the design of showing man 

 how weak he is in her presence. Even the armies of 

 Hannibal and Napoleon seemed all but powerless in 

 the face of these vast natural fastnesses. Compelled 

 to creep slowly and cautiously along the difficult and 

 narrow ways which alone were open to them, decimated 

 by the chilling blasts which swept the face of the rug- 

 ged mountain-range, and dreading at every moment 

 the pitiless swoop of the avalanche, the French and 

 Carthaginian troops exhibited little of the pomp and 

 dignity which we are apt to associate with the opera- 

 tions of warlike armies. Had the denizen of some 

 other planet been able to watch their progress, he might 

 indeed have said, " These men are a puny race." In this 

 only, that they succeeded, did the troops of Hannibal 

 and Napoleon assert the dignity of the human race. 

 Grand as was the aspect of Nature, and mean as was 

 that of man during the progress of the contest, it was 

 Nature that was conquered man that overcame. And 

 now man has entered on a new conflict with Nature in 



