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CHANNEL TUNNEL SCHEME. FRENCH INVENTOR FAVOURS GIANTS TUBE.
Several interruptions this winter En boat and airplane services bo- tween the Continent and the British Isles by storms and violent gales have caused renewed agita- tion for a tunnel or some sort of submarine passageway linking the two coasts.
The French press is practically Aunanimous in favour of a channel road, and it has strong support in England, as evidenced by the re- port of a special Committee which has just been issued. French engineers are, inclined to ridicule the fears of invasion held by cer. tain English politicians, The French maintain that in case of war the tunnel could be wrecked. from either shore and the British Navy would be robbed of none of Its supreme importance.
The latest French idea is to link- the two shores with a submarine tube, semi-submerged. This is the scheme of Prevost de Saint-Cyr, famous inventer and engineer, who claims he has worked out several important departures from previous methods in marine en- ginearing which make it entirely feasible.
Build Tube on Land, "Saint-Cyr's submerged tube would he says, be constructed on and and put into place from the surface of the water. All that would then remain would be to build the railroad tracks in the tube.
HONGKONG TELEGRAPH, MARCH 29th, 1930.
Here's the way Prevost de Saint-Cyr, French, inven- tor, proposes to construct the trans-channel tube for rail traffic. Sections would be built on shore, towed into position and then sunk to rest on piers 00 feet below the surface, Divers operating from barges would join the sections to- gether, after which the water could be pumped out. The pillars would be construct- Building Actually Begun.
sea by means ed at
of moulds which would be built ashore and work actually
In the early 80's, construction was undertaken. floated to position. They would British and French railways for
AT TINTAGEL.
Some Thoughts at King Arthur's Castle.
I have all my life thought of Tin. It is indescribably remote, thrust tagel as one of those places which up out of a grey sea towards the no man should see. For elght sky, with the jagged peaks of hundred years the story of that lesser rocks lifted like spears King who rides down history on a below it, and all around it the harpatring has soaked itself into hiss and whiper of the sea. Birds the imagination of English people, rose from the grass before me as Charlemagne for France; Arthur I walked; rabbits scuttled away to for England. The story grew here. dive into burrows in which-who On this grey rock above the sen, knows?may lie some fragment Uther Pendragon took that lovely (of a sword. queen, Igarno; and so began the A disappointing-ruin, but a story that ran through medieval great experience. As I climbed Europe challenging the imagina- the rocks and looked tlon of poet and writer, gathering gaunt cliffs I seemed to come strength and beauty, to break at last in the splendid climax of the "Grail" Music.
Tintagel! To thousands of English people those syllabies go clothed in grandeur.
over the
Tintagel is haunted. It is haunted not by Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, but by that moment in our lives when imagination caught fire and blazed. The ghosts on this rock are the great army of Englishmen and English women who in their youth! believed in Excalibur and wept in mere as the sorrow beside that three Rooded queens came in their barge with a crying that "shivered to the tingling stars" to bear the
nearer, not to the gentlemanly knights of Tennyson or the paladins of Malory, but to the rough chieftains of history from which the epic sprung. I saw Arthur stripped of the spell, with The sun was sinking seawards no Excalibur, but only a common as I climbed a rocky gorge and into a sea of troubles on which spear, and the sun of Rome sinking came to the most desolate little the fortunes of England were to valley, I think, in all the wild West set their sails. How difficult it Country. The sides of the cliffe is to visualize Arthur as a half- were scarred with grey splintered Roman kinglet. slate; halfway the rocks approach each other to form a kind of gate; at the end of the valley is a little bay, the sea foaming over a grey pebble beach and running through a cavern called "Merlin's Cave." It seems as though a great sword has split this valley in two; on one side, perched high, is the tiny village of Tintagel; on the other side covered in grass, wrecked On the other hand, the tunnel
by a landslide, are fragments of its critics say it would be imprae- be telescopic so that they could be ed channel tunnel companies and Tintagel. The key is kept in a method has many supporters, but
an ancient wall known to legend
tienble because, first, the cost lowered in sections. The topmost started to dig from opposite sides, would be prohibitive and, second, section would be attached to under-expecting to join in the middle, cottage among lemonade bottles. the infiltration would make drain-construction of a series of heavy The French company's building at ing of the tunnel impossible, even rafts, thus making it certain that Sangatte, near Calais, till stands woman who uses the word "please" "No, please, sir," said a little old if engineering economies made it the moulds would retain their They found that digging in the unexpectedly. "Please, it's too .possible.
proper height. With the moulds chalk under-sen bed was Saint-Cyr maintains that his submerged, they would be filled casy, but such strong political to-night, please. But if you pro- quite late for you to go up to the Castle scheme solves all the difficulties of with concrete piped from the pressure was brought against the mise not to be long, please, I'll give the tunnel. His tube would be of shore, forming the pillars. reinforced concrete, resting on inventor claims that putting the be stopped.
The English company that work had to
you the key." stone pillars on either shore, and tube sections in place would be on supports that would be sunk to quite a simple feat of engineering ure has stoot in the way of any steps cut-in the face of the rock. Ever since then, political pres- I began to climb steep, winding the channel bottom. It would be and they would be joined together actual development and until this The submerged to a depth of about 60 underneath the surface.
boomed below in feet, leaving ample space above
The French always have been can be swept away nothing will be "Merlin's Cave," the seagulls flew for navigation to pass over it and most forward with the channel done. The French argue that the crying, and in my hand was the the space beneath to allow the flow tunnel idea, The first definite airplane, the submarine and long key of Tintagel.
plan is believed to have been putange guns now make absurd any
of ocean currents.
as King Arthur's Castle of
waves
... king to Avilion.
I slithered down the 'rock steps and gaye up the key of Tintagel to the little old lady....
At night, with the moon falling| over the tumbled walls, Tintagel
moonlight, seems more dead than ever: the ruins of Egypt leap to life ia castles and abbeys; but Tintagel is so do many of our
to be found only within the covers of a book,
And I thought, as I looked down on it from the other side of the valley, saw the thin line of light run around the walls picking out a gateway here and crumbled corner there, that most of us have belonged to that Round Table
Arthur came back to give us youth again and called us out to joyous As a ruin Tintagel is the meat adventure he would have an army disappointing castle in England. great enough to ride from Camelot wall that is several centuries to the conquest of the earth.-H. later than King Arthur runs its V. Morton, in "In Search of En-i crazy course on the cliff edge, gland."
Think of that. What a moment! Such a tube would be constract-forward in 1802 by a French arguments against the tunnel as aIn my hand was the key of Tin-so many of us, in fact, that if ed in sections at least 300 metres engineer named Mathieu, who military or naval menace.
tagel! long and would be of reinforced thought that it would make stage The channel at its narrowest concrete. When completed ashore traffic possible between France point is 20 miles wide. During the they would be hermetically sealed, and England. Other French winter months fog, heavy sens and the sections floated to their engineers followed and during the and storms frequently make the positions above the pillars already 19th century coundings were made crossing by boat very disagreeable, built.
Ito discover the best roule,
sometimes impossible.
ELEPHANTS AT A WATER-HOLE IN KENYA.
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JA.F.B. 10)
Our picture shows elephants in a peaceful setting at a water hole, with one of the totes (youngsters) undergoing a compulsory bath, Mr. Marcuswell Maxwell, who
rison, secured a series of such photographs in Kenya without a shot being fired. (Times copyright.)
opanied by Captain C. F