place around San Francisco, and even advertised for the missing
Mrs. Johnson. His advertisement stated, after describing her in
sufficiently explicit terms, that by sending a note to a certain
address she would learn something to her advantage. This was not
exactly true, as she would have learned something greatly to her
disadvantage, had the detective been able to find her; but in the
pursuit of criminals, it is generally considered proper to tell a few
falsehoods in order to serve the ends of justice.
[Sidenote: A SHARP EYE FOR MONEY.]
“One day the detective visited a ship which had just come in from
the Sandwich Islands. He went there with an acquaintance who knew
the captain, and was invited on board. While they were in the cabin
enjoying the captain’s welcome, the detective heard the ship’s steward
telling a friend, who had called to see him, something about their
last voyage out. He said there were a lady and gentleman, very nice
people, who occupied a state-room, which he indicated, and who seemed
to be very fond of each other. ‘They had a good deal of money with
them,’ said the steward, ‘and they were pretty liberal with it, though
they would never allow me or anybody else to go into their state-room,
unless one of them was there. They had their money in a small trunk,
which they kept under the lower berth; and whenever they were both out
of the room at the same time, they always carried the key with them.
“‘When their room was fixed up in the morning, one of them always
stood near the door; and if we wanted to steal ever so much, we would
not have had a chance. To make everything sure, they had a spring-lock
on the door—a lock they brought with them, and fixed there with the
captain’s permission. They were not going to have anybody get into
their room with a pass-key.’
“The steward went on to describe the couple, and the detective found
himself interested. So he questioned him very closely, and became
pretty well satisfied that the gentleman was the veritable Johnson who
was supposed to be dead and buried some months before in Connecticut,
and that the lady was the disconsolate widow who had drawn the money
from the insurance company.
“Here was a dilemma; the captain and steward only knew that their
passengers had gone to Honolulu. They sailed not under the name of
Johnson, but under the very rare name of Smith. John Smith, I believe,
was the gentleman’s name, while the lady was Mrs. John Smith. It is
not easy, as everybody knows, to trace out a man bearing this name;
and even if he could be traced, very little good could come out of it,
if the man were in one of the South Pacific Islands, or, in fact, in
any place where our extradition laws could not reach him.
“While we were about it, we thought it would be well to know the
whole truth of the matter; and so we sent the detective down to the
islands, and told him to follow them up, but not to make it expensive.
He went to the islands, and there found that the parties had gone to
Australia. Then he went to Australia, and traced them to New Zealand,
and in New Zealand he found that they had gone, according to the best
of his information, in about three different ways; so he went back to
Australia. After a long and vigilant search he found them in Melbourne.
“He had no authority for the arrest and detention of Johnson, though
he made him believe that he had, and frightened him into giving up
half of the money he had fraudulently obtained, on condition that he
should not be further troubled, and on the condition also that he
should tell the whole story of the accomplishment of his fraud. As
long as we could not get the fellow, we thought his story would be an
interesting one, and would serve to put us on our guard in future.
The detective obtained what he believed the whole story, and with the
money Johnson had returned he made his way as speedily as possible to
New York.
[Sidenote: HOW THE FRAUD WAS ARRANGED.]
“The deception began at the very outset of the scheme. Bear in
mind that the man’s name was Johnson, that he was from a town in
Connecticut, had married his wife in New York, and was in the store of
a merchant of the great metropolis. There was a clerk in that store
by the name of Johnson, and he was from Connecticut; we will say
Smithville. He had married in New York about four years before this
occurrence. He was a steady, well-behaved man, and contemplated going
west. His wife had a small amount of property in her own name, but she
was not personally known to the merchant, and the merchant did not
know that Johnson hailed from Smithville. There was another clerk in
the adjoining store whose name was likewise Johnson. For convenience
in designating the two men, I will call the second one Roberts. He
came from Brownsville, in Connecticut. He had been married about four
years. He was a fast fellow, and rather unscrupulous, though his
employer did not know that he was in any way dishonest. The two clerks
had become acquainted by accident.
“When Roberts ascertained that Johnson conceived the idea of going
west, he (Roberts) laid a plan for swindling somebody. His wife was as
unscrupulous as himself, and so she entered into the scheme. Roberts
was of vigorous health, and could pass an examination with a life
insurance company without trouble. He was of the height, complexion,
and general appearance of Johnson; and this fact, added to the other
coincidences greatly favored his scheme. So he came to us, and
obtained the insurance, as before stated. When we made the inquiry of
the merchant, his answers were satisfactory, and all the references
were exactly as he stated them.
“His plan worked completely. He waited patiently until Johnson went
west, and then he went likewise. He did not, however, go to the same
city.
“He explained that it was his intention, a month or two after his
arrival out west, to obtain from a body-snatcher a corpse which would
answer his description, and then his wife would send the proper
telegram to her friends in the east, and proceed there with the
remains, which would appear to be those of her husband.
[Sidenote: FORTUNE FAVORS THE WICKED.]
“Fortune favored his scheme more than he had anticipated. At a
boarding-house where he was temporarily lodged, he found that a
boarder named Johnson was in very bad health, and not expected to
live. Affecting an interest in him, and claiming to discover a
relationship, he tended him carefully until the time of his death. The
detective had a suspicion that the sick man was helped along, but of
that there was no proof. Immediately after the death of the invalid,
the telegram was sent, and the wife proceeded east, as before related.
She had been at one time an actress, and was very good at simulating
grief. She deceived all the relatives of her husband in the most
complete manner. They thought her bowed down and broken-hearted with
grief, when all the time she was doubtless laughing in her sleeve.
The honest Johnson, whose name had been used without his knowledge or
consent, was found, after the detective’s return, to have lived at
St. Louis, the place to which he had first emigrated, and had gone
thence to New Orleans. He was much surprised when he learned what had
occurred, and positively denied ever having an insurance on his life,
or on that of anybody else. I suppose the swindler Johnson is still
in Australia, and trust that he will end his days there in peace and
quiet—though I fear his success in this instance will embolden him to
some other fraud. His operation was fairly, though not exceedingly
profitable, as, after deducting the premiums for the first year of
insurance, the expenses of his expedition, and the money he returned,
he did not net more than ten thousand dollars by the operation.”
[Sidenote: HOW POLICIES ARE VITIATED.]
Some of the insurance companies insert in their policies an
announcement that the policy becomes void if death results from
execution on the gallows, or in any other legal way, or from suicide.
On one occasion a man whose life was insured was killed in a duel,
and the company refused to pay the policy, on the ground that the man
died virtually by his own act. His adversary was known to be a dead
shot. The lawyer of the company, after stating all the arguments to
show that a man who goes a duelling is, for all practical purposes,
a suicide, clinched his argument by declaring that a man who would
go out with such an adversary might know beforehand that he would be
killed, and therefore his death was voluntary. I believe the court did
not sustain the claim of the company, but required the amount named in
the policy to be paid to the heirs of the unfortunate duellist.
I have heard it argued by insurance men that, where a person insured
takes to hard drinking, and dies from the effects of rum, he dies by
his own hand, and the suicide clause exempts the insurance company. In
some cases, I believe, this claim has been sustained; but it is now
generally discarded. A few cases have occurred in the United States
where men have insured their lives for the benefit of their families,
and have then deliberately killed themselves. The insurance companies,
in those cases, have resisted the payment of the claims; but, I
believe, they have been generally, though, not always, allowed.
[Sidenote: POPULARITY OF SUICIDE IN CHINA.]
There are some countries in the world where an insurance company
would be ruined in a very short time, if it paid the insurance claims
of men who kill themselves. In China, for instance, let a company
start upon this basis, and it would do a flourishing business for
a short time. Men in China are much more ready than others to die
for the benefit of their families or themselves; and a Chinese who
could make a good thing by killing himself would be sure to do it.
A company doing business in the way I have just stated would find,
some pleasant morning, that about half of its policy-holders were
dead, and the other half were making their preparations for blotting
themselves out of existence. The Chinese loves his family, and would
think he was doing a nice stroke of business by insuring his life for
their benefit, and then, quietly bidding them good by, “handing in
his checks.” If he could effect an insurance for a thousand dollars,
he would spend a hundred in having a glorious spree, and leave nine
hundred dollars to his afflicted widow.
[Illustration: EXECUTION OF A CHINESE CRIMINAL.]
[Sidenote: CHINESE SUBSTITUTES.]
The indifference of the Chinese to death may be well illustrated by
an allusion to the substitute system, as practised in the Celestial
Empire. Persons condemned to death for certain offences are allowed to
die by a substitute. This would be utterly impossible in America, as
one could nowhere buy a substitute who would be willing to die for a
stipulated sum; but in the Celestial Empire it is easy enough to find
a man who is ready to take the place of one accused of a crime and
ordered to be executed. The real culprit sends a friend to make the
negotiations. The broker can find a man for about six hundred dollars,
half down, and the balance on the fulfilment of the contract. The cash
is paid, and the time fixed for the execution, both of the contract
and substitute. With the money in hand, the substitute assembles his
friends, and they have a right royal spree. Everybody gets blind
drunk on samshoo or opium, and when the money is all expended,
the substitute bids farewell to his friends, and delivers himself up
for sacrifice. He is led to the place of execution, where he drops
on his knees. His head is bent forward, the executioner’s sword
whizzes through the air, and the substitute is a head shorter by the
operation. The culprit, who has thus satisfied the law by proxy, pays
over the balance of the money to the widow of the departed; everything
is lovely, and everybody is happy.
XXXIII.
RAILWAY TUNNELS.
TUNNELS AMONG THE ANCIENTS.—HOW THEY WERE MADE.—MODERN TUNNELS
AND THEIR LENGTH.—LAUGHABLE INCIDENTS IN RAILWAY TUNNELS.—THE TWO
LOVERS.—THE ANXIOUS FRENCHMAN.—ROBBERS.—THE HOOSAC TUNNEL.—ITS
HISTORY.—THE AUTHOR’S VISIT.—NATURE AND PROGRESS OF THE WORK.—AN
EXPLOSION.—ACCIDENT FROM NITRO-GLYCERINE.—THE CENTRAL SHAFT.—THE
TERRIBLE CALAMITY OF 1867.
Quite recently I picked up a newspaper about thirty years old, and
read in it an account of the great engineering difficulties which had
been overcome in the construction of the Boston and Lowell Railway.
This road, twenty-five miles in length, was among the earliest
constructed in America, there being less than half a dozen railway
lines which are older. The account proceeded to say that the great
obstacle was the deep cut through solid rock, near the city of Lowell;
and I can remember, in my boyhood days, riding over this road, and as
we reached the cut, the attention of passengers was called to it, and
at least half our number projected their heads through the windows
to look at the wonderful work. Three times was the work let out on
contract, and twice did the contractors fail, one of them failing
not only to complete the work, but to pay the men he employed. The
third contractor succeeded, but I believe he made no money out of his
speculation.
This once famous cut through solid rock is only a few hundred feet in
length, and I think about forty feet in depth. It has dwarfed into
almost microscopic insignificance by hundreds of other railway cuts in
this country and in Europe.
Railway tunnels were at that day unknown, though tunnels existed in
Europe for other purposes, some of them of very ancient date.
[Sidenote: LENGTH AND EXTENT OF TUNNELS.]
Tunnelling, in civil engineering, is an underground passage usually
constructed for conducting a canal or road beneath elevated ground. In
mining the term is also sometimes applied to horizontal excavations.
Tunnels are more common in Europe upon railways and canals than in
this country. In the United States the total length of tunnels is
not more than one mile for every thousand miles of road. In Great
Britain it is considered cheaper to tunnel through rocks than to make
open cuts deeper than sixty feet. In England the Wood-head Tunnel
exceeds three miles in length; and there is another on the London
and North-western Railway nearly three miles long. Twelve or fifteen
others on different roads exceed one mile each. The Box Tunnel on the
Great Western Railway, between Bath and Chippenham, is thirty-one
hundred and twenty-three yards long, or rather more than one and three
fourth miles.
On the canals of England there are five tunnels exceeding three
thousand yards in length. The longest of these is the Marsden Tunnel,
fifty-five hundred yards long. In France there is one tunnel on the
St. Quentin Canal over thirteen thousand yards long.
Some of the tunnels of the ancient Romans were quite extensive in
their character. One which was constructed by the Emperor Claudius
was cleared out some years since by the Italian government. It proved
to be about three miles long, thirty feet high, and twenty-eight feet
wide at the entrance, and was nowhere less than twenty feet high.
The excavation seems to have been conducted, after the plan practised
at the present time, by means of a number of vertical shafts first
sunk on the line of the tunnel, and from the bottom of these shafts
the work was carried on simultaneously in opposite directions.
Another tunnel, made in the early period of the Roman republic for the
partial drainage of the Alban Lake, is more than one mile long.
[Sidenote: TUNNELS IN AMERICA.]
Most of the tunnels in America are on the lines crossing the Alleghany
Mountains. There is one tunnel on the Pennsylvania Railway thirty-six
hundred feet long. It was built in two years, and cost half a million
dollars. There are many short tunnels on the line of the Baltimore
and Ohio Railway? and there is a tunnel on the Blue Ridge Railway
in Virginia forty-two hundred feet long. In South Carolina there
are several tunnels, one of them nearly six thousand feet long. The
Long Dock Tunnel in Bergen, New Jersey, opposite New York city, was
completed in 1860. It is forty-three hundred feet long, twenty-three
feet high, and thirty feet wide. On the line of the Central Pacific
Railway, over the Sierra Nevada Mountains, there are several tunnels,
the longest of them exceeding a mile; and railway engineering was
carried to such perfection in the construction of this road that its
tunnels were completed in a shorter time than in works of the same
kind and with an equal hardness of rock anywhere else in the United
States.
A journey through a railway tunnel is always more or less interesting
to a novice, but an old traveller soon gets accustomed to it, and
pays very little attention. On most roads, when a long tunnel is
approached, it is customary in the daytime to light the lamps but this
is by no means the general rule. Some queer incidents occur in these
dark journeys through tunnels.
The darkness is so thick that one could almost cut it with a knife.
It affords opportunities for enterprise, either for entertainment or
mischief. Enterprising robbers sometimes conduct their operations in
railway tunnels. Half a dozen of them will jostle a passenger, pick
his pocket, and carry away his satchel, and when he emerges from the
tunnel the robbers will have disappeared. It not unfrequently happens
that loving couples bestow attentions upon each other in passing
through tunnels which they would hardly indulge in were they in open
daylight, and under the eyes of their fellow-passengers.
Every one has read, and many have seen, demure couples sitting quietly
in their seats as the train enters a tunnel. There would be heard the
sounds of a slight struggle, and also of less slight kisses. When the
train emerges into the daylight, the pair will be sitting as demure as
ever, but with reddened cheeks and a general appearance of disorder.
[Sidenote: INCIDENT IN BERGEN TUNNEL.]
On one occasion I was riding on a train approaching the Bergen Tunnel,
near New York. The lamps were not trimmed and burning, and when in the
tunnel we were as much in the dark as an ignorant newsboy attempting
to read a page of Sanscrit.
In front of me was a young couple, and by their devoted attention to
each other I concluded that they were not married, or, if married,
were wedded to somebody else than to themselves. The gentleman was
reading a newspaper; the lady was busy with a novel, and giving an
occasional glance out of the window. As soon as the train entered
the tunnel it was so dark that you could not see anything. I heard
a struggle. There seemed to be a dislocation of hair, accompanied
by a shower of hair pins. The gentleman’s hat fell to the floor,
and I heard his paper crush as though it had been taken up by a
clothes-wringer. Then there were several warm osculations, accompanied
by ejaculations which sounded like, “You ought to be ashamed. Somebody
will hear you.”
These utterances seemed to be more a matter of form than anything
else, as the kissing went on like a company of infantry engaged
in file-firing. You would have imagined that a whole flock of
school-girls had met another flock of school-girls, from whom they had
been separated at least six months.
By and by the train came out of the tunnel.
The gentleman recovered his hat and pretended to be reading his
newspaper; he had it upside down, and it was torn, half through.
The lady’s book was open at about the first page, though she had
been reading it for three hours. Her hair had been loosened, and was
falling down. Her lace collar was disordered, and quite in keeping
with the collar of her masculine friend, one side of which was turned
up like the toe of an old boot, while his neck-tie had lost its trim
knot, and its ends were dangling like a pair of fish lines over the
side of a ship. The gentleman and lady were very red in the face,
and somewhat exhausted, and altogether they looked like a pair of
butterflies that had been run through a sausage machine.
[Sidenote: AN UNHAPPY FRENCHMAN.]
A story is told of a Frenchman travelling in a railway coach in
England, who was very anxious to change his shirt in order to make a
visit after the train had arrived, without taking the trouble to go to
a hotel. His guide-book indicated a tunnel on the road, and he asked
the guard or conductor how long the train would be in the tunnel. The
guard mistook his question, and supposed he asked how long before the
train would reach the tunnel. He answered briefly, “Half an hour.”
The coach in which the Frenchman was travelling was filled with ladies
and gentlemen. The traveller got down his valise, unlocked it, and
made everything ready for a change of apparel while they were in
the tunnel. As soon as they entered it he pulled off his shirt, and
prepared to put on a clean one; but imagine his surprise, and that
of his companions, on discovering that the train remained only three
minutes in the tunnel, instead of thirty. As they came out in open
daylight he was standing in their midst in a condition quite unfit for
a mixed company of ladies and gentlemen.
The longest railway tunnel in the United States, is the Hoosac
Tunnel, in Massachusetts. Its total length is twenty-four thousand
five hundred feet, or more than four and one-half miles. Its width is
eighteen feet, and its depth fourteen feet. As long ago as 1825, the
Hoosac Tunnel route was surveyed, and a legislative commission was
appointed to investigate the practicability of building a canal from
Boston to the Hudson River. They made their report, in which they
recommended a tunnel through the mountain.
In 1828 another commission reported to the legislature of
Massachusetts that they could get over the mountain with a railway
more quickly and more cheaply than through it, and recommended the
Boston and Albany line, which was opened for travel in 1842.
From Boston to the Hudson River the route by way of the Hoosac
Mountain is very feasible, with the exception of the mountain itself.
A story is told that Loammi Baldwin, the engineer who made the first
survey for the canal, was very much in favor of this route. With a map
or plan spread before him, he would say to the listener, “Why, sir, it
seems as if the finger of Providence had marked out this route from
the east to the west.” “Perhaps so,” said a listener, one day; “but
what a pity it is that the finger of Providence had not been thrust
through the Hoosac Mountain!”
[Sidenote: THE HOOSAC TUNNEL.]
In 1848 a company was chartered to construct a railway between
Troy and Greenfield. Three years later the work was begun, and the
directors voted to expend twenty-five thousand dollars in making
experiments upon the proposed tunnel. An enormous machine was
constructed and set to work in the winter of 1852. It was expected
to perform wonders, and it did; but they were all the wrong way. The
chief wonder was, that the machine, so carefully constructed, at such
great cost, could do nothing whatever.
According to the description, it was “designed to cut a groove around
the circumference of the tunnel thirteen inches wide and twenty-four
in diameter, by means of a set of revolving cutters. When this groove
had been cut the proper depth, the machine was to be run back on its
railway, and the centre core blasted out by gunpowder, and split off
by means of wedges.” This wonderful engine was not all that fancy
painted it. It cut a very smooth and beautiful hole into the rock for
about ten feet. Then it became deranged, and then—it never smiled
again. Its cutting days were over, and when it was withdrawn it was
quickly discarded and sold for old iron.
Another boring machine of the same sort, which was to cut a hole only
eight feet in diameter, was tried at the other end. That, too, made a
most glorious failure. Its failure was even more brilliant than that
of the first machine, for it never succeeded in cutting a single inch
of rock.
Different engineers have tried their hands and their skill on the
Hoosac Tunnel. In 1854, the legislature of Massachusetts appropriated
two millions of dollars to the Troy and Greenfield Railway, and in the
following year they were at work in earnest.
[Sidenote: CROSSING THE HOOSAC MOUNTAIN.]