METEORIC RIVERS OR WATERFALLS. 385 



Letter from Professor Silliman. 



[Sillimaivs Journal, Vol. 15.] 



194. We have passed the day in the Notch of the White 

 Mountains, examining the scenery, the geology, and the 

 ruins. The avalanches were very numerous ; they were 

 not, however, ruptures of the main foundation rock of the 

 mountain, but slides 1 from very steep declivities; beginning, 

 in many instances, at the very mountain top, and carrying 

 down, in one promiscuous and frightful ruin, forests, and 

 shrubs, and the earth which sustained them ; stones and 

 rocks innumerable, and many of great size, such as would 

 fill each a common apartment ; the slide took every thing 

 with it, down to the solid mountain rock, and being pro- 

 duced by torrents of water, which appear to have burst like 

 water spouts upon the mountains, after they had been tho- 

 roughly soaked with heavy rains, thus loosening all the 

 materials that were not solid, and the trees, pushed and 

 wrung by fierce winds, acted as. so many levers, arid pre- 

 pared every thing for the awful catastrophe. No tradi- 

 tion existed of any slide in former times, and such as are 

 now observed to have formerly happened, had been com- 

 pletely veiled by forest growth, and shrubs. At length, on 

 the 28th of June, two months before the fatal avalanche, 

 there was one not far from the Willey house, which so far 

 alarmed the family, that they erected an encampment a lit- 

 tle distance from their dwelling, intending it as a place of 

 refuge. On the fatal night it was impenetrably dark, and 

 frightfully tempestuous ; the lonely family had retired to 

 rest, in their humble dwelling, six miles from the nearest 

 human creature. The avalanches descended in every part 

 of the gulf, for a distance of two miles; and a very heavy 

 one began on the mountain top, immediately above the 

 house, and descended in a direct line towards it; the sweep- 

 ing torrent, a river from the clouds, and a river full of trees, 



1 The words " slides " and" avalanches " do not seem appropriate. AUTHOR. 

 49 



