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said to have taken fourteen days in reaching the Lake of Lucerne. 

 This of course gave ample time for escape, and we believe that no 

 lives were lost, though the destruction of property was very great. 



There is also evidence in the piled-up masses of conglomerate 

 which form what is called the Felsenthor, that at some period of 

 which we have no record, a berg-fall, similar in kind to that which 

 we are about to notice took place on the Rigi. 



The summer of 1808 had been very wet and we may assume 

 had loosened the intervening beds of clay and sand, or at least 

 had rendered them so slippery that the superincumbent strata 

 which rested on them at a considerable angle slid forward, and 

 the crest of the mountain was precipitated into the valley below. 

 The mass that fell was about 1,000 feet in length and 100 feet 

 in thickness and of unknown breadth. Such a mass descending 

 from a height of between 3,000 and 4,000 feet pressed forward 

 with irresistible force, bearing down everything that was in its 

 course, overwhelming villages — filling up about one third of the 

 Lake of Lowerz and doing untold damage to life and property. 

 The masses of rock now fill the valley on the eastern side of the 

 low col on which the village of Goldan stands, and many 

 of them rest on the slopes of the Kigi about four miles from the 

 spot whence they began their descent. Though it is now nearly 

 80 years since the disaster occurred (Sept. 5th, 1808), the crest 

 of the Rossberg, as seen from the Rigi, appears entirely barren, 

 and the course of the falling rock is clearly evident all down the 

 mountain side. 



In both these cases the exciting cause appears to have been 

 the same — an excessive fall of rain rendered the beds of clay 

 &c., soft or slippery. In the first case the clay and sand were 

 squeezed out by the pressure of strata whose angle of inclination 

 Avas not sufficient to cause them to slide down ; in the second the 

 angle of inclination determined the fall of the mass — the sub- 

 stratum became so altered in its condition as no longer to give 

 the support that had hitherto sustained the rock in its place. 



