UNDERGROUND PARIS.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CVI, Issue 12590, 27 August 1901, Page 6

UNDERGROUND PARIS.

(Windsor Magazine.) One July evening, nineteen years ago, a Parisian barber, having terminated his day’s labours and resolutely put aside all thoughts of beards and razors, had just taken his seat in the back parlour of his shop at a well-spread dinner table. The fragrant fumes of the pot-au-feu gratefully tickled his olfactory nerves, and as he slowly tucked his napkin, bib-like, between collar and neck, with the deliberation of a man-who -conceives that nothing can intervene between- him and -approaching beatitude unutterable, he felt that, at that moment, he envied no man living. Never was the proverb of the cup and the lip to receive more literal interpretation ! Suddenly, and without the least warning, the table and everything upon it vanished from view as completely as if it had been a mere cardboard feast at the pantomime, and the bewildered Figaro found himself staring into the depths of a dark, yawning chasm that had opened -at his feet. When he had recovered his senses sufficiently to look behind him, he perceived that the shopfront, with all its multi-coloured array of bottles and phials had likewise disappeared into the abyss, while, by an almost miraculous chance, the chair on which he was sitting remained pcised on the only part of the floor that had remained intact. It would seem that an area equal in extent to at least a tenth of the surface covered by the modern city of Paris is completely undermined. The work was commenced by the Romans nearly two thousand years ago. With the practical instinct which guided all their acts, they soon discovered the existence under the soil of strata of stone admirably' adapted for building purposes. When the strata out-cropped on the surface, the stone was quarried out jn the ordinary way. In other cases, circular holes, subsequently replaced by staircases, were sunk until the stratum of stone was met with, when galleries were driven horizontally through it. At intervals additional shafts were constructed to bring the stone to the surface. Traces of the oldest Roman workings are, even- to-day, distinctly discernible in many places. In addition to the stone, chalk, clay and gypsum have at various epochs and in various degrees been similarly exploited. The result is that there are now galleries of a total length of more than two hundred miles, ramifying in almost every direction under the city.