ere this road had passed, and the
zig-zag line by which the mountain was crossed. The road seems
positively to overhang the precipice, and reminded me of a mountain pass
in Switzerland--as, indeed, the whole of the road here does. Mr. Tyson
himself drove the first train over, and he said his heart was in his
mouth when, having got to the top, he saw the descent before him, and
the engine and train on a precipice where the least _contretemps_ would
have plunged the whole into the abyss below; but happily all went right,
and till within the last two months this temporary road has been used.
It was really quite frightful to look up and think a train could pass
over such a place, the grade being 420 feet in a mile, or 1 in 121/2; but
you will one day be able to form some idea of it, as a photograph was
taken, and Mr. Tyson will give us a copy of it. This is certainly a
wonderful country for great enterprises, and the Pennsylvania Central
Railway, by which we contemplate recrossing the Alleghanies, is in some
respects a still more remarkable undertaking, though the height at which
the mountains are crossed on that line is not so great as that on the
Baltimore and Ohio line, which, as I told you in my last, is at an
elevation of 2700 feet. It was long supposed that such a feat could not
be surpassed, but Mr. Tyson says that, encouraged by this, a railway now
crosses the Tyrolean Alps at a somewhat higher level.

To return, however, to the Board Tree Tunnel: Mr. Tyson told us that the
difficulty of restoring it to a safe condition was so great as almost to
dishearten him till he had arched it completely over from one end to the
other with solid stone masonry, which has rendered the recurrence of the
accident impossible; but the disheartening circumstance, while the work
was in progress, was the danger to which the men employed in the work
were exposed, from the constant falling in of the roof. During its
progress no less than forty-five men were killed, and about 400 severely
wounded. They were chiefly Roman Catholics, and were it not for the
encouragement given by an energetic Roman Catholic priest, he hardly
thinks the men would have continued the work. The doctor, too, who
attended the wounded, and whom we saw at breakfast at Grafton, was also
most devoted to them. It was quite touching to hear the tender-hearted
way in which Mr. Tyson spoke of the poor sufferers, for he was
constantly there, and often saw them go in to almo