HIGH LAIOS OF THE EARTH. 207 



valleys, sometimes filling them up with its volume, and burying man, beast, and village 

 beneath its load. The avalanches composed simply of drifts, are not so dangerous and 

 destructive as those of snow rendered clammy by a thaw. The former may frequently 

 be removed without much damage being sustained, but the latter are precipitated in 

 compact masses, and carry away or crush the objects that lie in their path. In the 

 canton of the Grisons, an avalanche descended in the year 1749, upon the valley of 

 Tawich, and entirely covered the whole village of Rueras. The snow torrent fell in 

 the night without disturbing some of the inhabitants, who, on awaking in the morning, 

 were surprised that the day did not break ; sixty out of a hundred persons were 

 rescued from their perilous situation alive, a sufficient quantity of air to support life 

 being obtained through interstices in their snowy canopy. In the same canton, an 

 avalanche descended upon Val Calanca in 1806, which removed a forest from its site 

 to an opposite side of the valley, and fixed a fir-tree upon the roof of the parsonage 

 house. Avalanches occur in the Pyrenees and in Norway, but are most frequent in 

 the high Alps owing to their abrupt and precipitous declivities. They are often set in 

 motion by vibrations of the air, such as the discharge of a musket, or a peal of thunder, 

 or the mere passage of a traveller will produce it; and hence in districts subject to them 

 a cautious silence and wary footsteps are enjoined upon the inexperienced visitor. 

 Professor Forbes gives a striking instance of encountering a highly electrical condition 

 of the atmosphere, when at a considerable elevation in the Alps : " We were still above 

 9000 feet above the sea, when I noticed a curious sound which seemed to proceed from 

 the Alpine pole with which I was walking. I asked the guide next me whether he 

 heard it, and what he thought it was. The members of that fraternity are very hard 

 pushed indeed, when they have not an answer ready for any emergency. He therefore 

 replied with great coolness, that the rustling of the stick proceeded from a worm eating 

 the wood in the interior. This answer did not appear to me satisfactory, and I therefore 

 applied the experimentum crucis of reversing the stick, so that the point was now 

 uppermost. The worm was already at the upper end. I next held my hand above my 

 head, and my fingers yielded a fizzing sound. There could be but one explanation 

 we were so near a thunder cloud as to be highly electrified by induction. I soon 

 perceived that all the angular stones were hissing round us like points near a powerful 

 electrical machine. I told my companions of our situation, and begged Damatter to 

 lower his umbrella, which he had hoisted against a hail shower, and whose gay brass point 

 was likely to become the paratonnerre of the party. The words were scarcely out of 

 my mouth when a clap of thunder, unaccompanied by lightning, justified my precaution." 

 The thunder clap, the hunter's horn, or even the human voice, has frequently shook the 

 nicely poised avalanche from its site, and hurled it into lower regions, crushing trees, 

 sweeping away rocks, and damming up the streams that have lain in its course. 



Besides accumulations of snow, we meet with glaciers in high regions, or extensive 

 fields of ice. These are formed from the snow-fields, partially thawed and subsequently 

 frozen. The water yielded by the melting of the surface, in connection with rain, 

 percolates through the mass, which acquires consistency, and is converted into compact 

 ice by a depressed temperature. Iceland is appropriately named from the number and 

 extent of its glaciers, which are there known by the name of Yokuls, signifying large 

 masses of ice. The most extensive, the Klofa Yokul, in the eastern quarter of the island, 

 is a vast chain of ice and snow mountains, supposed to fill a space of not less than three 

 thousand square miles. Some of the Yokuls are remarkable for their vacillation, not 

 remaining in a settled position, a peculiarity common to the Alpine glaciers. These icf 

 formations are found among the Norwegian highlands, in the chain of the Pyrenees, upr i 

 the Sierra Nevada of Spain ; but their grand European site is the Alps. " If," sr. s 



