MOUNTAIN OF ASHES
On Christmas Day in the year 1870, a great, work was completed, and no doubt tin; shades both of Hannibal, the great Carthaginian general, and of Napoleon smiled approvingly when they saw that Mt. Cenis, a pass dividing Italy from France, had been pierced by the cunning hand of man. Mt. Cenis was so called because, when Hannibal and his armies marched across the Alps to attack the Romans in the year 218 8.C., they burned down the forest there, and the mountain or pass became the “mountain of ashes!” The tunnel through Mt. Cenis is eight miles in length, and lies some seventeen miles west of the pass over which Napoleon built a carriage road between 1803 and 1810. An Englishman constructed a light railway alongside the road in IS6B. This railway was considered a great feat at the time but—such was the rapidity of engineering progress at that period—tlic tunnel was started within a few months of the railway’s opening. Nowadays there, are several longer and more wonderful railway tunnels in the world, the Simplon tunnel which was opened in 190 G being the most wonderful. This is 124 miles in length and is the longest and lowest tunnel through the Alps. Here again Napoleon built a carriage way!
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/NA19321216.2.81.14
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Northern Advocate, 16 December 1932, Page 12 (Supplement)
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214MOUNTAIN OF ASHES Northern Advocate, 16 December 1932, Page 12 (Supplement)
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