of which tower is to open on the surface of
an artificial island constructed on the summit
of the Varne Bank. To this island is to be
attached a harbour covered with buildings,
which will form a sea-side quay. The upper
part of the tower will communicate with the
level of the railway by a gentle slope; the
goods wagons will thus be able to mount to
the quay, where they will be ready for shipment.
Query, why could not such goods be
just as well shipped at Calais or London?
And what is to become of the tunnel if a
water-spout, or an extraordinary tide, burst
over the top of the tunnel-tower?

Such contingencies are not to be allowed
to disturb the pleasing picture of a railway
station a hundred feet underground, from
which you emerge by an enormous well, to
find yourself in the middle of the sea! The
engine hurries you on, beneath the ocean;
you halt; you have ten minutes grace; there
is a refreshment-room, with scalding-hot tea,
and pretty girls to pour it out. You mount
the staircase; the sea-breeze sharpens your
appetite; you descend, to call for mock turtle,
sandwiches, and a glass of sherry. The Varne
Isle, with its quays and its ports when
illumined by gas at night, will be such a lighthouse
as has never yet been seen on the face of
the earth or of the sea It is proposed to call
it L'Etoile du Varne, or the Star of Varne.

This fairy scene is all very satisfactory in
time of peace; but, should war break out
between England and France, the submarine
tunnel might be inconvenient for our
territorial security. Against that eventuality, a
provision has been made. To remove any
temptation to destroy the great work itself
for the sake of interrupting all communication,
a series of valves are to be let into
submarine chambers at the limits of each of the
two countries; so that either State, declaring
war, would have the power of inundating the
tunnel. It will take only an hour to throw in
seventy-five thousand cubic metres of water
and to drown the whole, up to the roof. It
will require seventy hours to pump the water
out again. Good care no doubt will be taken
that the key of the drenching apparatus is
placed in charge of trusty persons; and that,
should Napoleon the Third ever visit Victoria
by the submarine line, no Italian regicides will
ever be able to gain possession of the Chamber
of Valves. The letting in of waters would
be even worse than the beginning of strife.

The estimated expense of the whole is
really not much; only one hundred and
seventy millions of francs. But in an
undertaking like the present, one set of figures is
really as well worthy of confidence as another.
When the thing is done, we shall know how
much it has cost; the total of the whole may
be named when the bill is sent in, and not
before. It would be unreasonable to expect
that a secure road under the waves can be
had for nothing. The article, from its very
nature, must be a costly luxury.

But were I, the writer of this, a civil engineer,
and could I catch the ear or the eye of
men in authority, I would suggest for their
grave consideration, that if the world is
beginning to be tired of the slow, sea-sick, but
safe passages OVER the waters of the Channel
from Dover to Calais and from Folkestone to
Boulogne—if it hesitates before the awful
dangers and difficulties, and the enormous,
utterly-incalculable expenses of a more rapid
transit UNDER the tidal stream, by means of
the submarine tunnel which has just been
roughly described—and if the said ambitious,
progress-loving world is still willing to
combine rapidity, safety, and the absence of sea-
sickness by the execution of a work which,
though less costly aud less wasteful of human
life to execute than the subaqueous road,
would yet leave the mightiest monuments of
Egypt far behind in point of magnitude and
utility, as it would be in advance of them in
time—let the grand problem be boldly solved
by the formation of a solid embankment
capable of bearing a triple or quadruple road
on its summit, THROUGH the waves of the
Straits of Dover. Let us have an Anglo-
Gallic Isthmus.

Is this more impossible, more exaggerated
above the proportions of common sense, than
the tunnel scheme? I think not, after calm
reflection. A Plymouth breakwater or a
Cherbourg digue, has only to be constructed of the
requisite length, and the thing is done. If a
man can make a mile of digue, he can make
twenty miles of digue. As to deep water,
Algiers will show what has been done in spite
of depth; as to the length, breadth, and thickness
of a construction, there is the Wall of
China to encourage us to out-do the performance
of barbarians. Suppose that M. Thomé
de Gamond had already built up his thirteen
islets to the requisite altitude above the level
of the sea, which of the two would then cost
the most, both in treasure and in sacrifice of
life, at that epoch of the work; to sink the
shafts and complete the tunnel, or to connect
the islands by a causeway of rock raised far
above the reach of the highest tides? Of
material there is abundance near at hand, at
least on the French side of the undertaking;
and any quantity could be made to come by
permanent or temporary railways from the
interior. Only a few miles from the southern
extremity of my isthmus, are the inexhaustible
quarries of Ferques.

The embankment scheme saves and spares
the very long tunnels on either side by which
the coast lines are reached before the subterranean
tunnel itself is entered. And when
once completed, which mode of passage would
be the easiest to work, the cheapest, and the
safest? No lighting up to be done by day,
no drainage, no ventilation, and scarcely any
repairs, would be needed on the international
embankment. ln point of comfort, security,
and sense of satisfaction, is there a choice
between the two? Whence is all the oxygen