^66 KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE. 



For the perforation the waters of the Reuss were utilized on the northern slope p 

 those of Val Tremola on the southern. In 1879, Favre, who directed all the 

 works in person, died suddenly of apoplexy in the tunnel as he was explaining 

 the operations to some foreign visitors; nor was he the only victim, 179 workmen 

 having lost their lives by accidents or suffocation, while hundreds of others have 

 contracted maladies which sooner or later will bring them to the grave. 



The work which was never interrupted dhy or night, occupied nine years 

 and three months — 3,330 days in all. The first estimates of the sum total to be 

 expended amounted to 227,000,000 francs, of which Italy agreed to pay 55,000,- 

 000, while various municipalities and provinces made up another 15,000,000; 

 Germany and Switzerland contributed 63,000,000, the remainder of the sum be- 

 ing made up by shares, of which a vast number are held by Italians ; so that in 

 fact Italy has contributed far more than half of the sum total, the province and 

 city of Milan alone furnishing 2,500,000. 



The gallery of the St. Gothard runs in a straight line from the village of 

 Goschenen to Albinengo, a village to the west of Airolo. The tunnel to be ex- 

 cavated along this line was 14,912 metres long, 2,700 metres longer than the 

 gallery of Mont Cenis. In order to join it with the railroad which comes toward 

 Airolo in an east-to-west direction, another gallery of 150 metres was excavated; in 

 fact, between Goschenen and Brunnen there are twenty- seven galleries. The alti- 

 tude at the entrance of the tunnel at Goschenen is 1,109 metres above the sea level; 

 in the centre fifty metres higher, at Airolo forty metres higher. The geological 

 formation differs essentially from that of the Cottian Alps. The bore of the gal- 

 lery after some 2,000 metres of granite or granite-gneiss, entered into crystalline 

 schist, intersected with veins of serpentine, a mass, in short, of the hardest rock, 

 which at first threatened to baffie the perforating machines. The hydraulic works 

 were also extremely tedious, owing to the difficulty of obtaining a sufficiently 

 strong body of water from the Reuss, while, on the Airolo side, during the win- 

 ter, avalanches often obstructed the bed of the tremola, rendering it necessary to 

 excavate a bed under the snow. Signor Favre, in order to overcome the diffi- 

 culty with the Reuss, constructed an enormous reservoir and a canal, while to 

 baffle the avalanches he caused the water to be conducted by means of a wooden 

 canal into the bed of a minor torrent, the Chiesso, less subject to avalanches. 

 Other difficulties were encountered and overcome by his indomitable will, so that 

 at his death it may be said that only the mechanical portion of the work re- 

 mained. 



This was completed really in 1881, but the inauguration was delayed, owing 

 to various, circumstances, until May 21, 1882. Then Italy, Germany, Switzer- 

 land, and we may say all Europe, participated with thorough satisfaction in the 

 ceremonies attendant on the opening of the St. Gothard Tunnel ; but, as is usual- 

 ly the case, the promoter, the initiator of that great international work has been 

 almost entirely forgotten in his birthplace, Milan, as in his beloved Lugano, 

 where he spent the last twenty years of his life in study and poverty, dying there 

 in 1869. Carlo Cattaneo, the greatest philosopher and political economist of 



