I.R.
* * * * *
LOUIS FAVRE, CONSTRUCTOR OF THE ST. GOTHARD TUNNEL.
It is now already a year that the locomotive has been rolling over the
St. Gothard road, crossing at a flash the distance separating Basle from
Milan, and passing rapidly from the dark and damp defiles of German
Switzerland into the sun lit plains of Lombardy. Our neighbors
uproariously feted the opening of this great international artery, which
they consider as their personal and exclusive work, as well from a
technical point of view as from that of the economic result that they
had proposed to attain--the creation of a road which, in the words of
Bismarck, "glorifies no other nation." As regards the piercing of the
Gothard, the initiative does, in fact, belong by good right to the
powerful "Iron Chancellor," so we have never dreamed of robbing Germany
of the glory (and it is a true glory) of having created the second of
the great transalpine routes, that open to European products a new gate
to the Oriental world. It seems to us, however, that in the noisy
concert of acclamations that echoed during the days of the fetes over
the inauguration of the line, a less modest place might have been made
for those who, with invincible tenacity and rare talent, directed the
technical part of the work, and especially those 15 kilometers of
colossal boring--the great St.
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