Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 52, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 September 1875 — Through Tunnels. [ARTICLE]

Through Tunnels.

Charles Warren Stoddard writes: There are forty tunnels between Pisa and Genoa; the railroad threads the coast so closely that but for its fortunate elevation above high-water mark it would iucrust \vith the salt crystals that plunge shoreward in the spray of many a gale. So frequent are these tunnels between Pisa and Genoa, and so long the galleries—which are, in other words, tunnels with rows of large windows or arches hewn out of the wall against the sea—that it seems almost as if this picturesque and stupendous chiseling were the work of the sea and the storm. The coast is very abrupt; cliff after cliff juts out over the water like the wings in a theater, all looking very much alike, and a half dozen of them usually being visible at one time. The cliffs are hung with creeping vines and decked with ferns and aloes. They are each one a picture, and from each I got some pleasant little surprises, for as the train emerged from the tunnel I was sure to find kind of toy city, exceedingly small but complete in itself, clinging to the bluft ahead of us, and not very many rods distant. In some cases we had scarcely time to get used to the daylight blazing all along the coast before we were dragged into the pitchy blackness of the next tunnel. Sometimes we stopped in the midst of a tunnel or gallery and wpre amazed to find passengers alighting —at least! was, for it was all novelty to me—and when I looked out of the carwindow I found that the bluff above us was split in two, and through the chasm very narrow and very steep stairs cut in the rock led up to the summit, where the edges of the houses were visible, with their blank walls glowing in the sunshine. The next moment we were rushing on from cliff to cliff, above smooth stretches of sea-sand as yellow as gold, and below a long slope-of the hills inland, sprinkled thickly with villas even to their summits, where the clouds leaned heavily and threatened rain. -

—As an Arab clings to his horse, and as anjndian clings to the legends of his fathers, so do deaf men cling to the habit of walking on railroad tracks. The locomotive thins one out to find two more on ahead.