“Yes the cable has been renewed twice. The last one put up is 12 inches in diameter. It is easy now to put one up, with the one already up to steady and steer it. It only has to fall up as you might say, under the influence of repulsion. The occasion of putting up the last cable, however, was not rust, but a singular accident. During the winter there are generally only two or three men left at the pole to keep the shaft oiled and see that everything is all right. One winter the men left in charge undertook to move some heavy timbers and steel beams that had been left on the top of the mountain, and managed to get them into such a position that they were caught by the cable which slowly carried them around until they partly fell into a crevice and became immovable. The cable bent itself around the obstruction, and in doing so was thrown so far down over the edge of the mountain which as I told you had been turned off to resemble a capstan, that it began to be wound around it as if it were a great spool. The men telegraphed to the general manager who came up with a crowd of engineers and workmen, but they could not do a thing except to keep the cable raised by repulsion as much as possible to keep it from catching some obstruction on the ground. The cable made the complete circuit of the railway track in a trifle over 5½ days. The mountain stem had been whittled down to about a mile in diameter so that each revolution wound up a little over three miles of cable, which was at the rate of a little over half a mile a day.