Evening Republican, Volume 17, Number 163, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 July 1913 — BUILT NEW HIGHWAY [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

BUILT NEW HIGHWAY

ENGINEERS HAVE PUT LINE THROUGH BERNESE ALPS. Difficulties Which Might Be Classed as Incredible Surmounted, and the Work Is a Monument to Skill. of the Builders. The new route to Italy, via the will be opened to the

public in a few weeks. Thanks, however, to the courtesy of the management, the writer was enabled recently to form one of the first parties to travel .from Switzerland to Italy by this new highway through the Ber-

nese Alps. The construction qf the railway in this avalanche-swept place has been accompanied by almost insurmountable difficulties, and here also the Alps have exacted their toll of human life, a fact of which one is grimly reminded by the trim graveyard near the tunnel mouth, filled with victims who met death during the construction of the railway. Avalanche barriers have been constructed high up on the mountain sides above Goppenstein, and the. line where it emerges from the tunnel 'is guarded by a wall like one of those which girdle medieval cities at the point The line Is now carried along the left side of the narrow Lotschen valley, where every foot of ground has been veritably wrested from Nature, and after passing through a number of smaller tunnels leaves this uninhabitable region and enters the smiling Rhone valley. With the Rhone stretched like a broad ribbon a thousand feet below, we continued our. journey along the edge of dizzy precipices and over frail wooden temporary bridges thrown across apparent ly bottomless ravines—a journey fraught with many dangers and accompanied by many exciting incidents , when made with the service train on a temporary set of metals, but which will be one of the most interesting in the Alps when accomplished with the fine electric trains of the Bernese Alps railway. Many of the great steel bridges and granite viaducts were not yet quite completed, and the service train made many a detour which will be later unnecessary. Travelers will be interested to learn that one of the tunnels of the southern portion of the line la named the Victoria tunnel, and a Union Jack will fly here at the opening. The name has its origin in the fact that the mountain spur which the tunnel penetrates forms a wonderfully faithti silhouette of Queen Victoria’s head, with crown complete, \ Gradually descending, the line line, which commands magnificent views of mountain peak and valley, at last reaches Brig; here we exchanged our primitive conveyance for a comfortable carriage in a Simplon express, and in the space of a brief hour or two were basking in the sunshine which bathes the shores of Lake Maggiore. We had reached our goal after a journey through two mighty mountain ranges' and had traveled from Switzerland to Italy by a route which will for decades to come facilitate the journeying of all those whose way lies from north to south.