CHAPTER LVII.

LUCERNE TO EINSEIDLEN.-DR. ZAY'S HISTORY OF THE ROSSBERG AVALANCHE.

WE left Lucerne at five o'clock in the morning, that is, myself and an English clergyman, whom I had promised at Geneva to meet at Lucerne and travel with him into Italy, down the pass of the Splugen. We were dropped by the steamer at the village of Brunnen in the Canton of Schwytz, near the little republic of Gersau, the whole of which occupied one village, and a principality of a few acres. The old town of Schwytz, from which the country of Switzerland takes its name, a town of old heroic remembrances and valorous men, is most romantically situated at the foot of those curious hierarchical mountains called the Mitres. We entered the old church, looked into the town-house with its interesting antique portraits, of real ancestral nobility, passed the Mitres and the Goldau lake, and the Rossberg avalanche, and wound our way towards the curacy of Zwingle and the Abbey of Einseidlen. There is much food for reflection all the way, as well as much natural beauty for enjoyment. A few mornings ago we were overlooking all this scene from the summit of the Righi, how beauti-. ful! But is there one spot in all this world of ours where the thought of beauty is not linked sooner or later with that of pain and death?

at once;

No man can pass this Rossberg mountain without thinking of the dread catastrophe that here, only a few years ago, overwhelmed in so vast a burial three or four whole lovely villages: —one of the most terrible natural convulsions in all the history of Switzerland. Four hundred and fifty-seven persons are said to have perished beneath this mighty avalanche. The place out of which it broke in the mountain is a thousand feet in breadth by a hundred feet deep, and this falling mass extended bodily at least three miles in length. It shot across the valley with the swiftness of a cannon-ball, so that in five minutes the villages were all crushed as if they had been egg-shells, or the mimic toys of children. And when the people looked towards

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the luxuriant vale, where the towns had lain smiling and secure, the whole region was a mass of smoking ruins. It makes one think of the sight that met the eyes of Abraham, when "he got up early in the morning to the place where he stood before the Lord," and all the country, where the cities of the plain had been, was as the smoke and scurf of a furnace.

But this history ought not to be related in any other language than the simple and powerful narrative of Dr. Zay, of the neighbouring village of Arth, an eye-witness of the tremendous spectacle. I shall give his words, even though they may be fami liar to my readers; a paraphrase would not be half so interesting.

"The summer of 1806," says he, "had been very rainy, and on the first and second of September it rained incessantly. New crevices were observed in the flank of the mountain, a sort of cracking noise was heard internally, stones started out of the ground, detached fragments of rocks rolled down the mountain; at two o'clock in the afternoon of the second of September, a large rock became loose, and in falling raised a cloud of black dust. Toward the lower part of the mountain, the ground seemed pressed down from above; and when a stick or a spade was driven in, it moved of itself. A man, who had been digging in his garden, ran away from fright at these extraordinary appearances; soon a fissure, larger than all the others, was observed; insensibly it encreased; springs of water ceased all at once to flow; the pine-trees of the forest absolutely reeled; birds flew away screaming. A few minutes before five o'clock, the symptoms of some mighty catastrophe became still stronger; the whole surface of the mountain seemed to glide down, but so slowly as to afford time to the inhabitants to go away. An old man, who had often predicted some such disaster, was quietly smoking his pipe, when told by a young man, running by, that the mountain was in the act of falling; he rose and looked out, but came into his house again, saying he had time to fill another pipe. The young man, continuing to fly, was thrown down several times, and escaped with difficulty; looking back, he saw the house carried off all at once.

"Another inhabitant, being alarmed, took two of his chil

dren and ran away with them, calling to his wife to follow with the third; but she went in for another who still remained (Marianna, aged five): just then, Francisca Ulrich, their servant, was crossing the room with this Marianna, whom she held by the hand, and saw her mistress; at that instant, as Francisca afterwards said, 'The house appeared to be torn from its foundation (it was of wood), and spun round and round like a tetotum; I was sometimes on my head, sometimes on my feet, in total darkness, and violently separated from the child.' When the motion stopped, she found herself jammed in on all sides, with her head downwards, much bruised, and in extreme pain. She supposed she was buried alive at a great depth; with much difficulty she disengaged her right hand, and wiped the blood from her eyes. Presently she heard the faint moans of Marianna, and called to her by her name; the child answered that she was on her back among stones and bushes which held her fast, but that her hands were free, and that she saw the light, and even something green. She asked whether people would not soon come to take them out. Francisca answered that it was the day of judgment, and that no one was left to help them, but that they would be released by death, and be happy in heaven. They prayed together. At last Francisca's ear was struck by the sound of a bell, which she knew to be that of Steinenberg: then seven o'clock struck in another village, then she began to hope there were still living beings, and endeavoured to comfort the child. The poor little girl was at first clamorous for her supper, but her cries soon became fainter, and at last quite died away. Francisca, still with her head downwards, and surrounded with damp earth, experienced a sense of cold in her feet almost insupportable. After prodigious efforts she succeeded in disengaging her legs, and thinks this saved her life. Many hours had passed in this situation, when she again heard the voice of Marianna, who had been asleep, and now renewed her lamentations. In the meantime, the unfortunate father, who, with much difficulty, had saved himself and two children, wandered about till daylight, when he came among the ruins to look for the rest of his family. He soon discovered his wife, by a foot which appeared above

STORY OF THE AVALANCHE.

ground: she was dead, with a child in her arms.

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His cries,

and the noise he made in digging, were heard by Marianna, who called out. She was extricated with a broken thigh, and, saying that Francisca was not far off, a farther search led to her release also, but in such a state that her life was despaired of: she was blind for some days, and remained subject to convulsive fits of terror. It appeared that the house, or themselves at least, had been carried down about one thousand five hundred feet from where it stood before.

"In another place, a child two years old was found unhurt, lying on its straw mattress upon the mud, without any vestige of the house from which he had been separated. Such a mass of earth and stones rushed at once into the Lake of Lowertz, although five miles distant, that one end of it was filled up, and a prodigious wave passing completely over the island of Schwanau, seventy feet above the usual level of the water, overwhelmed the opposite shore, and, as it returned, swept away into the lake many houses with their inhabitants. The village of Seewen, situated at the farther end, was inundated, and some houses washed away, and the flood carried live fish into the village of Steinen. The chapel of Olten, built of wood, was found half a league from the place it had previously occupied, and many large blocks of stone completely changed their position.

"The most considerable of the villages overwhelmed in the vale of Arth was Goldau, and its name is now affixed to the whole melancholy story and place. I shall relate only one more incident:-A party of eleven travellers from Berne, belonging to the most distinguished families there, arrived at Arth on the second of September, and set off on foot for the Righi a few minutes before the catastrophe. Seven of them had got about two hundred yards a-head,-the other four saw them entering the village of Goldau, and one of the latter, Mr. R. Jenner, pointing out to the rest the summit of the Rossberg (full four miles off in a straight line), where some strange commotion seemed taking place, which they themselves (the four behind) were observing with a telescope, and had entered into conversation on the subject with some strangers just come up;

when, all at once, a flight of stones, like cannon-balls, traversed the air above their heads; a cloud of thick dust obscured the valley; a frightful noise was heard. They fled! As soon as the obscurity was so far dissipated as to make objects discernable, they sought their friends, but the village of Goldau had disappeared under a heap of stones and rubbish one hundred feet in height, and the whole valley presented nothing but a perfect chaos! Of the unfortunate survivors, one lost a wife to whom he was just married, one a son, a third the two pupils under his care: all researches to discover their remains were, and have ever since been, fruitless. Nothing is left of Goldau but the bell which hung in its steeple, and which was found about a mile off. With the rocks torrents of mud came down. acting as rollers: but they took a different direction when in the valley, the mud following the slope of the ground towards the lake of Lowertz, while the rocks preserving a straight course, glanced across the valley towards the Righi. The rocks above, moving much faster than those near the ground, went farther, and ascended even a great way up the Righi: its base is covered with large blocks carried to an incredible height, and by which trees were mowed down as they might have been by cannon.'

The people of Goldau are said to have possessed such interesting qualities of person and manners, such purity and simplicity of domestic life, as well corresponded with the loveliness of their native village and its surrounding scenery. How strange and awful seems under such circumstances the transi tion from Time into Eternity! No thought was there of death, no effort of preparation, no moment of prayer, but a swift, dread crash, a wild surprise, and those overtaken souls were in the world of spirits! What a lesson for the living! Yet its power is all taken away, in all probability, with the race re maining, and with the crowd of visitors annually passing, its power as a lesson of sudden death, by the mere fact that death under the same circumstances is not likely to be the lot of those now living. No, answers the lesson, not perhaps under the same circumstances; but the solemnity of the event is not in its circumstances, and your own death may be as sudden, though)