twelve months they seemed to be in the midst of a lake. But nothing
could damp the ardor of the contractor, Favre.

His troubles were greater still when the undertaking had almost been
suspended for want of money, when the workmen struck in 1875, and, when,
two years later, the village of Arola was destroyed by fire. And how
many times, again and again, the mason-work of the vaulted roof gave way
and fell! Certain "bad places," as they were called, cost more than nine
hundred pounds per yard.

In the interior of the mountain the thermometer marked 86 degrees
(Fahr.), but so long as the tunnel was still not completely bored, the
workmen were sustained by a kind of fever, and made redoubled efforts.
Discouragement and desertion did not appear among them till the goal was
almost reached.

The great tunnel passed, we find ourselves fairly in Italy. The mulberry
trees, with silky white bark and delicate, transparent leaves; the
chestnuts, with enormous trunks like cathedral columns; the vine,
hanging to high trellises supported by granite pillars, its festoons as
capricious as the feats of those who partake too freely of its fruits;
the white tufty heads of the maize tossing in the breeze; all that
strong and luxuriant vegetation through which waves of moist air are
passing; those flowers of rare beauty, of a grace and brilliancy that
belong only to privileged zones;--all this indicates a more robust and
fertile soil, and a more fervid sky than those of the upper villages
which we have just left.