| OCR Text |
Show THE PRESENT generation is certainly an actively progressive one in projects of material improvement. In addition to the great enterprises that have been made facts accomplished, we may note the progress on this continent of the suspension bridge which is to connect New York and Brooklyn, and of the tunnel which is to unite New York and New Jersey, and the inception of not one alone, but of two canal projects across the Isthmus of Panama. On the other side of the ocean, the present vast undertaking is a tunnel under the Straits of Dover, which shall do away with the Calais packet passage so famous for sea sickness, and put England in new and immediate railroad connection with the Continent. The preliminary workings have had the most satisfactory results, the constructors have sunk their shaft to the statum [stratum] in which they propose to bore, and promise that in three or four years they will complete the task. Probably ten years would be nearer right, but what an accomplishment it will be if even in that period the Londoner shall be enabled to take a through palace-car for Paris, Berlin, St. Petersburg or Constantinople. What would an Englishman of the reign of good Queen Bess or even of George the Third have said to a prophecy like that? Truly the world moves. |
