Page:Whymper - Scrambles amongst the Alps.djvu/92

62 navvies) undoubtedly is, it is difficult to believe one sees all the material that has been extracted from more than two miles and a half of tunnel. It is interesting as showing the greatest angle at which debris will stand. Its faces have, as nearly as possible, an angle of 45.°

During four years the ordinary means of excavation were alone employed, and but 1300 yards were driven. In this time the machines were being constructed which were destined to supersede a large part of the manual labour; at the beginning of 1861 they were sufficiently complete to be put to work, and in the summer of that year I went to Bardonnêche to see them in operation.

The clocks of the Oulx had just struck twelve on the night of the 16th of August, as the diligence crawled into the village from Briançon, conveying a drunken driver, a still more intoxicated conducteur, and myself. The keeper of the inn at which we stopped declined to take me in, so I sought for repose in a neighbouring oatfield, and the next morning mightily astonished a native when I rose enveloped in my blanket-bag. He looked aghast for a moment at the apparition which seemed to spring out of the ground, and then turning round in a nervous, twitching manner, dropped his spade and fairly bolted, followed by hearty shouts of laughter. Bardonnêche—a little Alpine village whose situation is not unlike that of Zermatt, was about an hour distant. A strange banging noise could be heard a long way off, and a few minutes after my arrival, I stood in one of the shops by the side of the machine which was causing it, and by the side of M. Sommeiller, the inventor of the machine. They were experimenting with one of his famous "perforatrices," and a new form of boring-rod, upon a huge block of rock which