LECTURE ON SWITZERLAND. 129 



from the flow of water through it, in thirty-two hours it had drained 

 otr ten feet in depth of the hike, and in twenty-four hours more, twenty 

 feet. More than one-third of the water had thus eseaped when the 

 action of the issuing cataract upon the base of the mound had so far 

 weakened it by detaching hirge masses of ice, that th.e barrier was sud- 

 denly burst asunder. tVith a dreadful noise the liberated waters took 

 their way down the valley in one mountain wave, carrying before them 

 enormous rocks, the forest and hill-side, fields, fruit-trees and fences, 

 bridges and chalets, and furrowing or covering the low grounds with 

 the debris of the mountains. The destruction is represented to have 

 been terrible, in all but that of life api)roaching that of the previous 

 catastrophe. The energies of this simple peoj^le were but for a time 

 l^aralyzed by this dire misfortune, and means were almost immediately 

 t;iken to repair its effects and prevent its recurrence. 



Captain Hall, who visited the scene just after the disaster, and again 

 after an interval of fifteen years, thus speaks of the first appearance 

 and of the change which industry had wrought during the interval : 

 " We said to ourselves, that no time could ever restore their town (Mar- 

 tigny) to prosperity, or reclothe their fields with verdure. Yet, only- 

 fifteen years afterward, when I again visited this scene of utter, and, 

 as it seemed, hopeless desolation, I could scarcely by any effort of the 

 imagination recall the spot to my mind, or be persuaded that it really 

 was the same ground 1 had seen laid waste. * * * « 



.The fields were all again thickly matted with verdure; the hedges and 

 dividing walls appeared never to have been disturbed; flower-gardens 

 and kitchen -gardens and grass-plots smiled on every side of this happy 

 valley; apple-trees, laden with fruit, and rows of tall poplars marked 

 out many lines of new and better roads than before, leading from new 

 bridges which formerly had no existence." The date of the first disas- 

 ter was found inscribed upon a beam in one of the chalets, accompanied 

 by a set of letters ; the whole may be thus paraphrased : ]\I. O. E. | 

 1595. I W. B. W. D. B. | T. G. O. G. The puzzle has been thus deci- 

 phered by a Swiss Monkbarns : Maurice Olliet erected, 1595, when 

 Bagnes was destroyed b}^ the glacier oi' Getroz. 



Friburg lies between Vaud on the south and Berne on the north. 

 It was the ninth canton admitted intb the confederation. From having 

 been the most aristocratic of all — some sixteen families governing 

 seventy thousand people — it is now almost as liberal as Vaud. Suffrage 

 is universal and the press is free. The religion of the state is Roman 

 Catholic, the bishop still retaining the title of Bishop of Lausanne and 

 Geneva. Party spirit, probably, run higher in this canton than in any 

 other. Tiie old aristocracy has its friends, though in the minority. Tho 

 republicans, who triumphed in the revolution of 1830, excluded tiie clergy 

 from the councils, but their influence still maintains a party there, and 

 the church itself is divided between the rival influences of the Cordeliers 

 and of the Jesuits. There are nine convents in the canton, a lycevm 

 9S 



