i8 HIGHWAYS AND HORSES. 



down into the valley, or shot over one of the many 

 precipices which we had passed ; and certainly our 

 escape was marvellous, seeing how many times we had 

 been capsized close to the very edge of the snowy 

 track, beyond which was nothing but a sheer descent 

 of hundreds of feet. 



It must be remembered that the Simplon road is 

 not even a very high pass, being only 6636 feet 

 above sea-level. It was commenced on the Italian 

 side in 1800, and on the French side in 1801. The 

 road was decided upon by Napoleon immediately after 

 the battle of Marengo, whilst the recollection of his 

 own difficult passage of the Great St Bernard was 

 fresh in his memory. 



The Simplon Pass was considered at the time a 

 stupendous result of engineering skill, but the gigantic 

 works of recent times have equalled and surpassed it. 

 The finest point of the Simplon road is the Gorge of 

 Gondo. The surveys of this road were made by 

 M, Cerd ; it took six years to complete these surveys ; 

 more than 30,000 men were employed in the con- 

 struction of the Simplon road at one time. There are 

 611 bridges, great and small, in addition to the far 

 more costly works, such as terraces of masonry miles 

 in length ; ten avalanche galleries, either quarried or 

 built ; and twenty houses of refuge, to shelter travellers 

 and lodge the road-makers engaged in maintaining 

 the road. Its breadth is never less than twenty-five 

 feet, and the slope nowhere exceeds one foot in thirteen, 

 although it has to ascend to a height of 6636 feet. 

 Its cost averaged ^5000 a mile;* in England the 

 average cost of constructing a turnpike road is ^1000 

 a mile. 



* The entire road cost eighteen million francs. 



