Landslide

“ One does not understand why rocks and landslides do not plunge down these declivities daily. A landslip occurred three quarters of a century ago, on the route from Arth to Brunnen, which was a formidable thing. A mass of conglomerate two miles long, a thousand feet broad, and a hundred feet thick, broke away from a cliff three thousand feet high and hurled itself into the valley below, burying four villages and five hundred people, as in a grave. ”

“ Upon a large scale rocks which were either originally incoherent or have been made so by weathering, after they have become saturated with water, may start into sudden motion as great landslides or avalanches, which in the space of a few moments materially change the face of the country, and by burying the bottom lands leave disaster and misery in their wake. ”

“ They are streaked with the paths of landslides, occurring at different periods, which have left the rocky ribs of the mountains bare from their bald tops to the forests at their feet, and have filled the sides of the valley with heaps of earth, gravel, stones, and trunks of trees. ”

“ Necessarily the progress of a great earthquake wave will produce great changes in the earth's surface features; for example, landslides, where immense layers of clay or other material slip or slide to a lower level and are thrown across the course of a river, causing its waters to be dammed up and then by spreading to form great lakes. ”

“ Earthquake and flood have brought thee: thou art here,
At once the master that men love and fear—
Whom they have sought by many strange devices,
In ancient river-beds; in interstices
Of hardest quartz; upon the wave-wet strand,
Where curls the tawny sand
By mountain torrents hurried to the main,
And thence hurled back again:—
Yes, suffered, dared, and patiently
Offered up everything, O gold, to thee!—
Home, wife and children, native soil, and all
That once they deemed life's sweetest, at thy call;
Fled over burning plains; in deserts fainted ”

“ The mountains do not stand a storm well. A hard rain will dissolve ridges, lay bare new strata, undermine and overturn cliffs. It seems almost a land of enchantment, where old landmarks may disappear in a single storm, or an impressive landscape come forth in a night. Here the god of erosion works incessantly and rapidly, dissecting the earth and the rocks. During a single storm a hilltop may dissolve, a mountain-side be fluted with slides, a grove be overturned and swept away by an avalanche, or a lake be buried forever. ”

“ There is the rumble of some avalanche, as, after a drifting storm, a mass of snow too heavy to keep its place slides and tumbles from the mountain peak. Wherever there is a nook between the rocks on the shore, where a man may build a house, and clear a field or two;—wherever there is a platform beside the cataract where the sawyer may plant his mill, and make a path from it to join some great road, there is a human habitation, and the sounds that belong to it. ”

“ Nor is evidence wanting of those catastrophes which from time to time convulse a mountain region. At the base of the bare cliffs and down the rocky declivities lie huge blocks of stone that have been detached by the weather from the precipices above. And, doubtless, from time immemorial the dwellers on these slopes have been familiar with the crash and tumult of the landslip, and with the havoc wrought by it on forest and field. Along the mountain-ridges, too, clouds are ever gathering, and thunderstorms are of continual recurrence. ”

“ One mountain rose sublime, towering above all, on the craggy sides of which a few sea-weeds grew, washed by the ocean, that with tumultuous roar rushed to assault, and even undermine, the huge barrier that stopped its progress; and ever and anon a ponderous mass, loosened from the cliff, to which it scarcely seemed to adhere, always threatening to fall, fell into the flood, rebounding as it fell, and the sound was re-echoed from rock to rock. Look where you would, all was without form, as if nature, suddenly stopping her hand, had left chaos a retreat. ”

“ The ground sounds hollow underfoot, and the awful subterranean thunder shakes one’s mind as the ground is shaken, especially at night in the pale moonlight, or when the sky is overcast with storm-clouds. In the solemn gloom, the geysers, dimly visible, look like monstrous dancing ghosts, and their wild songs and the earthquake thunder replying to the storms overhead seem doubly terrible, as if divine government were at an end. ”

“ The internal rumblings, the crash of the avalanches, the fall of masses of granite and basalt, and the whirlwind of pulverized snow, made all communication impossible. Sometimes they went perfectly smoothly along without jolts or jerks, and sometimes on the contrary, the plateau would reel and roll like a ship in a storm, coasting past abysses in which fragments of the mountain were falling, tearing up trees by the roots, and leveling, as if with the keen edge of an immense scythe, every projection of the declivity. ”

“ As you listen, the thunder peals loudly, then dies away into a hoarse grumble, rolls on again as if swelled by minor storms, clangs in the ear, and after a while, like a river of sound welling over and irrepressible, drowns the sense in one vast rush of inexpressible grandeur—then melts away till you are almost startled at the silence and look up to see the Falls, like a green mountain-side streaked with fresh snowdrifts, slide and shimmer over the precipice. ”

“ Floated by ice from some Alpine summit, or hurried along in torrents of mud, and floods of water, it may have traversed a quarter of the globe, amid the crash of falling forests, and the death shrieks of the noble animals which they sheltered. The mountain range, too, with its catacombs below, along which the earthquake transmits its terrific sounds, reminds us of the mighty power by which it was upheaved;—while the lofty peak, with its cap of ice, or its nostrils of fire, places in our view the tremendous agencies which have been at work beneath us. ”

“ Sometimes the level plain is broken up into savage ridges and awful canons, along whose arid bottoms no water streams. As you stagger through their chaotic bottoms, you see vast boulders poised overhead, tottering to a fall; a shiver of earthquake, a breath of hurricane, and they come crashing and splintering in destruction down. Along the sides of these acclivities extend long, level lines and furrows, marks of where the ocean flowed ages ago. ”

“ A loose stone rolling down, a broken rail, or a derailment would immediately hurl the iron horse with its cars and human lives thousands of feet down to the bottom of the abyss, and reduce the whole to an unrecognizable wreck. Beautiful trees, grass, flowers, creeping plants adorn hills and vales except in the ravines and cliffs, where foaming creeks and cataracts have torn away the vegetation by tumultuously tossing themselves from rock to rock, from cliff to cliff, from valley to valley, gradually uniting in the rivers that continually feed the mighty Ganges. ”

“ Have you never watched the waves breaking upon a beach in a heavy storm? How they catch up the stones and hurl them down again, grinding them against each other! At high tide in such a storm these stones are thrown against the foot of the cliff, and each blow does something towards knocking away part of the rock, till at last, after many storms, the cliff is undermined and large pieces fall down. These pieces are in their turn ground down to pebbles which serve to batter against the remaining rock. ”

“ If the great peaks rose at once from the deepest valleys, every stone which was struck from their pinnacles, and every snow-wreath which slipped from their ledges, would descend at once upon the inhabitable ground, over which no year would pass without recording some calamity of earth-slip or avalanche; while in the course of their fall both the stones and the snow would strip the woods from the hillsides, leaving only naked channels of destruction where there are now the sloping meadow and the chestnut glade. ”

“ For a storm broke, and that with such violence that we thought it would have shattered the bare hills, for an infernal thunder crashed from one precipice to another, and there flashed, now close to us, now vividly but far off, in the thickness of the cloud, great useless and blinding glares of lightning, and hailstones of great size fell about us also, leaping from the bare rocks like marbles. ”

“ The water of the downpour would have rushed by us, muddy with the spoils of the rocks, coming together into torrents, cutting deep gorges and canyons as they hurried past to deposit their sediment in the earliest seas. Through the clouds we should have glimpsed a great sun moving visibly across the sky, and in its wake and in the wake of the moon would have come a diurnal tide of earthquake and upheaval. ”

“ The whirlwind in its fury depopulates a district, or a small tract of land over which it passes perhaps once in a century--the earthquake rumbles through the hidden recesses of the earth, and here and there the yawning cavern swallows the ill-fated inhabitants that dwell upon its surface; the lightning's stroke blasts in a moment, and cuts the threads of life without any warning; and the steam engine destroy their thousands in a year; and the winds and the waves conspire to people the dark caves of ocean with the dead. ”

“ The road, which gradually grew worse and worse, lay for the most part close to the sea, which the storm threw into magnificent agitation;—sometimes across a dreary flat of bog, sometimes by the side of chasms and steep precipices, or through wide chaotic plains, in which masses of rock were thrown together in such wild confusion, that it seemed the spot from which the giants had stormed heaven. ”

“ They tell of the danger that lurks on the steep slopes of grass, where the mowers have to go down with ropes around their waists, and in the beds of the streams where the floods sweep through in the spring, and in the forests where the great trees fall and crush men like flies, and on the icy bridges where a slip is fatal, and on the high passes where the winter snow-storm blinds the eyes and benumbs the limbs of the traveller, and under the cliffs from which avalanches slide and rocks roll. ”

“ Fearful stories were told of the gulfs, sullen waters, and dizzy heights upon that terror-haunted mountain. In storms the wind roared like thunder in its caverns and along the jagged sides of its cliffs, but at other times that uplifted land-uplifted, yet secret and full of dismay—lay silent as a cloud on the horizon. ”

“ QUAFFING THE STORM.
The enkindled storm swept ragingly into the great forest
And the forest stirred aquiver and sang
With gloomy voices
As when time in chaos began.
All trees clenched themselves in violence, in strife,
An eagle the forest became,
Beating its pinions before avenging wrath of the storm
Aloft to the richly-clad vault. ”

“ In unsettled weather, when storms are growing, the mountain looms immensely higher, and its miles of height become apparent to all, especially in the gloom of the gathering clouds, or when the storm is done and they are rolling away, torn on the edges and melting while in the sunshine. ”

“ But outside a great storm was raging, and blowing so hard that he could scarcely keep his feet; houses and trees toppled over, the mountains trembled, rocks rolled into the sea, the sky was pitch black, and it thundered and lightened, and the sea came in with black waves as high as church-towers and mountains, and all with crests of white foam at the top. ”

“ Never did she go up the cliff but that great boulders would break loose under her ponderous tread, and tumbling headlong with mighty bound, would dash down the steep mountain-side and land with a roaring crash in the bed of the river below, where to this day they may be seen choking the tide of the stream in a great rocky mass. ”

“ The sand, flying in clouds, conceals the distant mountains, by which alone he could be piloted; and, straying off, he finds himself bewildered among piles of sand and tattered sage-brush, when the storm has blown over. The remains of human beings found by parties going into the mountains have proved that such poor wretches must have wandered for days without food, without water, till they found their death, at last, on the wide, inhospitable plain. Their death—but not their grave ”

“ Our skeleton column was followed by other skeleton columns, and during all that day we tramped and splashed, and slipped, and scrambled, over rocks, and through scrub, in mud, and over slopes of ice and snow—a route impossible for carts.
Roads had now ceased, and even the tracks were only those which had been trampled by the multitudes in front of us; over passes 5,000 feet high; between mountains 8,000 feet high; through snow, ice, boulders, unbroken forest, mud-holes, bridgeless rivers. And always those pitiless mountains glaring at the tragedy ”

“ When, beneath the vertical rays of the bright and cloudless sun of the tropics, the parched sward crumbles into dust, then the indurated soil cracks and bursts as if rent asunder by some mighty earthquake. And if, at such a time, two opposite currents of air, by conflict moving in rapid gyrations, come in contact with the earth, a singular spectacle presents itself. ”

“ If any one who has climbed the peaks of the highest mountains throw a stone down their very deep clefts, a sound is heard from them; or if he throw it into one of the mountain lakes, which beyond doubt are bottomless, a storm will immediately arise, just as when you thrust a straw into the ear or nose of a ticklish animal, it shakes its head, and runs shuddering away. ”

“ The crash of the thunderbolt, the bellowing of the volcano, the awful groaning of the earthquake, the roar of the hurricane, the reverberating peals of loudest thunder, any of these, or all combined, are as nothing compared with the tumult raging over every square mile, every square yard, of the surface of each one among the stars. ”