Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 45.djvu/487

 winter and five hundred in summer. This is in addition to passenger trains.

The estimated cost of this great work was between two and a half and three million dollars, but its actual cost was considerably less, a rather remarkable fact in connection with such works. Owing to the great risk any contractor would have to assume, and the large sum required to cover that risk, the work



was performed by the company, only the material being contracted for.

The opening ceremonies were attended with much éclat, as became the completion of such a work, uniting not simply two towns but two nations, and rendering possible a greatly increased international trade when the tariff barriers which now stand in the way are removed. It was proposed to spread the banquet in the tunnel, beneath the waters of the St. Clair, with the Governor-General of Canada seated on one side of the international boundary line and the President of the United States on the other, but this part of the programme had to be abandoned. The banquet, to which three hundred guests sat down, after they had passed through and formally opened the tunnel, brought together a greater number of notable men in the world of science, literature, and politics than had ever before gathered in a similar manner in Canada.