The Conservative

A MILE UNDER A MOUNTAIN
Trip through the Hoosac Tunnel.

The tunnel through the Hoosac Mountain, in Massachusetts is now more than a mile in length, and after numerous delays and litigations the work is again making good progress. A correspondent of the Rochester (N. Y.) Union writes an interesting account of a trip through the tunnel in the last week of July. He says:

"Before entering the mountain we examined the works at the river's side by which the tunnel is making its way toward North Adams. We found, in a building called the Compressor House,' four immense air condensing machines, each working four cylinders, by which air is driven through a pipe more than a mile into the tunnel, and there made to do the work of steam in drilling the rock at the 'heading,' as the remote end of the tunnel is called. Such wheezing, puffing and groaning you never heard air make. And no wonder. It was obliged to be crowded into an immense number of atmospheres, and made to travel 5,700 feet through an eight-inch pipe, and work and twist a steel drill into a vein of quartz rock almost as hard as adamant. It labored very severely to do this work, so when we get our short trunk line from Rochester to Boston we cannot be too grateful to the vigorous air which gives us the Hoosac tunnel. We must also thank Deerfield river, which is all used up in working the compressors. More thoroughly is it absorbed by the canal from the dam above the tunnel than is the Genesee river often absorbed by our Rochester mills in midsummer.

"Having seen the instruments which are boring the mountain and are hastening the cessation of the stage ride you enjoyed so much, we returned to the opening of the tunnel over the immense pile of work called the dump,' a stone hill several hundred feet long and sixty high, the debris of the blasting in the mountain. The train was about to start for the 'heading.' The 'train' consisted of three cars, each about two feet high, trucks and carriages, six feet by four in horizontal shape, drawn by a weary-looking white mule named 'January' (from his snowy appearance we suppose), who was superintended by a most active and dirty small boy. The third 'gang' was then on its way to relieve the second. They were our fellow-passengers. Off we started with a jerk by 'January' and a yell by the 'small boy,' and like a leap from the tropics to the arctics, from day to night, from sunshine into a crevasse, we darted into the coldness, blackness and drippings of the Hoosac tunnel.

"The sudden change from a temperature of 80 to that of 52, which is the unvarying temperature of the tunnel the year round, was at first very disagreeable. The constant percolation of water through the shallow rock at the entrance was a disenchanting surprise. The darkness was expected. Our lantern did good service, however, and very soon the temperature became pleasant; and as the rock got thicker the water ceased dripping. Then the weird experience of an underground journey commenced. On we went into total darkness. The hollow, rumbling sound of the cars intensified the activity of the whole nervous organizations of us novices. Imagination worked hugely and fearfully. On for eighteen hundred feet through a hole twenty-four feet by twenty arched we went, when, like stars through a dim mist, some lights appeared in our front, and our small boy kept up an unearthly yelling, which he afterwards called 'the whistle of his engine.' In some dim and seemingly ugly and unnatural way, we rolled past 'gallery' holding workmen, who, afterwards understood, are the 'finishers' of the tunnel, on into the darkness again, our mule looking like a ghost, and we feeling like denizens of another and very strange world.

"Every influence seemed to conspire to produce terror and excessive unearthliness thenceforth. From the first 'gallery' for one thousand two hundred feet the tunnel is not quite finished, and the projecting rocks sixteen or eighteen feet above us glided, through the gloom and our lantern light, in a way no one can imagine who has not seen them. Dusky and fearful, they seemed to move toward us, threatening us with injury. But about three thousand feet from the entrance our journey changed into something we are glad now to have experienced, but which we do not at all care to experience again. The second gallery was passed. The shape of the tunnel changed. The roof came down ten or twelve feet. And we were going on at full speed with the jagged rock roofing us only about four feet above, and sometimes not so far off as that.

"For nearly 2,700 feet we thus journeyed, stooping down to the bottom of the car, and feeling almost a sense of suffocation. I assure you your journey, 1,500 feet overhead, just then, was a thousand-fold more pleasant to you than was ours to us. We would have exchanged places with you no one can tell how gladly. It may be very well for professionals to go into the mountains in our way, but it is terrible for those who have never done such a thing before. Our mule, small though he was, crouched as he ran, and we each moment bent lower in fear of the rocks, which seemed to be ready to sweep us off the cars. At last we stopped about three hundred feet from the 'heading,' in the midst of some thirty or more dingy-looking operatives, each of whom held a candle in his hand or had it attached somewhere to his body.

"We got off the cars, trembling with the excitement of the journey, and though we had been prepared for it, there was a flash of light, and down we almost fell to the rocky floor. The tunnel blasts had been fired. Our ears were stunned as by the explosion of a battery of sixty-four pounders ten-fold intensified, and the stricken air rushed by us as the gust of a tempest, while off through the mountain reverberated the sound like oft-repeated thunder. Our party bore it well. A few days before our visit some ladies fainted at the shock. The blast was repeated. Forty drillings were exploded. We then went forward to the 'heading.' About two hundred feet from it were the drilling machines, and in front of them two heavy gates, placed partly across the tunnel to prevent rocks from being thrown too far toward the workmen. Near the gates was the galvanic battery used for firing the blasts which are exploded six times a day. About one hundred feet from the 'heading' was a rock several hundred pounds in weight. It had been thrown so far from the blast. We were seven hundred feet from the tunnel's entrance, and pulled out some of the quartz through which the drills are now making slow progress, and hurried to the cars.

"We got back to open air as soon as possible, concluding we would much rather follow you over the mountain than try to get any further through it. Our way out was beset with perils, not the least of which were two nitro-glycerine explosions at the first 'gallery,' which blocked our road so that we were obliged to climb over the debris and walk the rest of the way to the outer air. As we emerged into daylight, dirty and nervous, the heat was oppressive and dispiriting; but we were grateful for our deliverance, and glad we had had a safe adventure,' which was an adventure indeed.

In about four years the way will be made through the mountain, and not till then can one go under it as well as over it. Talcose slate is hard to penetrate, especially when there is so much quartz and spar injected through it as there is at Hoosac. There are two hundred and fifty men east and west of the mountain, working toward each other night and day. The central shaft, which you saw on top of the mountain, is to be 1,030 feet deep, and the workers are down now about 700 feet. Next spring the central shaft will be finished to the grade, and in it the tunnelling will go off west and east also. Now about twelve feet a day is made; then about thirty feet a day will be accomplished. In one year less than the contracted time the whole work will be finished, and the Springfield road east will not compare for beauty or speed with the Hoosac tunnel route.

"By faith even mountains can be removed and cast into the depths."