The firm who accepted the contract undertook to complete the work for £158,400, or $792,000, which was considered to be a very low price. It was attacked from both ends, and mechanical boring was adopted. Convenient water power was harnessed to drive the Brandt rock drills, which worked under a pressure of some 1,200 pounds per square inch. Boring proceeded somewhat slowly, more so, in fact, than the contractors had anticipated; but this was due to the extreme hardness of the rock encountered, while the work was handicapped by delays which the contractors could not have controlled. In the first place labour proved scarce and expensive. The men working on the coast, although experienced in drilling and blasting rock, could not be persuaded to proceed up-country to practise their skill. The situation was too remote, and the elements were too bitter, and seeing that extensive railway construction was proceeding at the same time in other and more congenial parts of the country, there was no cogent reason why the men should hie to an inhospitable locality for work. The tunnel-borers, however, were spared the tribulations which have assailed their colleagues in other parts of Europe. Faults in the rock strata were very few and far between, while subterranean streams and pockets of viscous mud did not overwhelm them. The temperature within the boring, moreover, never rose to an intolerable point, the maximum recorded being 52° Fahrenheit. This was in striking contrast to the conditions on the Gotthard, Cenis, Simplon, and other central European tunnels, where the mercury rose at times to the vicinity of 90 degrees. Yet the workers in the Gravehals tunnel experienced their own peculiar dangers and exasperating misadventures. The climatic conditions were the most trying, and many men abandoned their tasks after a short experience in this bleak situation, for work at a lower level. This monotony was varied one day by an avalanche, which crashed down the mountain-side, smashed into the power-house and carried away some of the machinery. Work had to be suspended for some six weeks while the damage thus caused was repaired. At another time work could not be carried forward because no water was available, and about two months of enforced idleness had to be endured until the turbines could be set going once more.