FLOODS IN SWITZERLAND. 137 



suddenly and completely that all the water which re- 

 mained in the lake rushed out in half an hour. The 

 downward passage of the water illustrated, in a very 

 remarkable way, the fact that the chief mischief of 

 floods is occasioned where water is checked in its out- 

 flow. For it is related that, ' in the course of their 

 descent the waters encountered several narrow gorges, 

 and at each of these they rose to a great height, 

 and then burst with new violence into the next basin, 

 sweeping along forests, houses, bridges, and cultivated 

 land.' Along the greater part of its course the flood 

 resembled rather a moving mass of rock and mud than 

 a stream of water. Enormous masses of granite were 

 torn out of the sides of the valleys and whirled for 

 hundreds of yards along the course of the flood. M. 

 Escher relates that one of the fragments thus swept 

 along was no less than sixty yards in circumference. 

 At first the water rushed onwards at a rate of more 

 than a mile in three minutes, and the whole distance 

 (forty-five miles) which separates the valley of Bagnes 

 from the Lake of Geneva was traversed in little more 

 than six hours. The bodies of persons who had been 

 drowned in Martigny were found floating on the 

 farther side of the lake of Geneva, near Vevey. 

 Thousands of trees were torn up by the roots, and the 

 ruins of buildings which had been overthrown by the 

 flood were carried down beyond Martigny. In fact, 

 the flood at this point was so high that some of the 

 houses in Martigny ' were filled with mud up to the 

 second storey.' Beyond Martigny the flood did but 



