A. lady whose letter is published in the Times gives
an inter- esting, though somewhat sensational, account of an accident in the Mont Cenis tunnel, on the 6th inst. The French train was just in the centre when it ran into a goods train, which had, we pre- sume, been delayed by overloading—the amount of goods traffic being amazing—the engine burst, temporarily destroying the perfect ventilation of the tunnel, and " several " passengers were killed. The remainder were detained for five hours without light and with insufficient air, and in momentary expectation of injury from engines sent for their relief, an expectation shared by the officials. The train was at last extricated, and the acci- dent, of course, was no worse than any other tunnel acci- dent; but so deeply had the imagination of the passengers been struck by the horror of being crushed in the centre of the earth, as it were, that when they arrived again at Modane, women fainted, men wept, and many of both sexes were too prostrated to walk, and will not recover for months. As it chanced, the present writer passed through the tunnel exactly four hours before the accident. The distance was traversed in 21 minutes, and so perfect was the absence of smoke or smell that the windows were never closed.
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