Evening Republican, Volume 16, Number 280, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 November 1912 — CHANNEL IS AN OLD PROJECT [ARTICLE]

CHANNEL IS AN OLD PROJECT

Land Communication Between England and France Has Been Thought Of for Many Years. A tunnel between England and France beneath the English channel was first proposed at the beginning of the nineteenth upntury by Mathieu, a French mining engineer. Fifty years later the scheme was financed, but it was not until 1867 that it seemed that the project would be actually attempted. At that time there were a dozen or more plans for rail communication between the two countries. The accepted scheme was that of a tunnel bored beneath the bed of the channel. The estimated cost of the undertaking was about £10,000,000. Preliminary boring Lad been made, when the work waß interrupted by the Franco-Prussian war. In 1874 the French and English governments resumed negotiations concerning the tunnel, leaving the matter in the hands of a joint commission. Failure on the part of the English company holding the contract for the work to receive suflicient funds resulted in the failure of the enterprise in 1880. Now, the project Is receiving some attention, a better feeling having been established between the people of the two countries.