METEORIC RIVERS OR WATERFALLS. 389 



most certain, that the whole family were destroyed ; and it 

 soon became quite so, by the arrival of a brother of Mr. 

 Crawford from his fathers, six miles farther east. From 

 him, we learnt that the valley of the Saco, for many miles, 

 presented an uninterrupted scene of desolation. The two 

 Crawfords were the nearest neighbors of Willey. Two 

 days had now elapsed since the storm, and nothing had 

 been heard of his family in either direction. There was 

 no longer any room to doubt, that they had been alarmed 

 by the noise of the destruction around them, had sprung 

 from their beds, and fled naked from the house, and, in utter 

 darkness, had been soon overtaken by the falling mountains 

 and rushing torrents. The family, which is said to have 

 been amiable and respectable, consisted of nine persons, Mr. 

 Willey and his wife and five children of theirs, with a hired 

 man and boy. After the fall of a single slide, last June, 

 they were more ready to take the alarm, though they did 

 not consider their situation dangerous, as none had ever 

 been known to fall there previous to this. Whether more 

 rain fell now than had ever been known to fall before in 

 the same length of time, at least, since the sides of the moun- 

 tains were covered with so heavy a growth of woods, or 

 whether the slides were produced by the falling of such a 

 quantity of rain so suddenly, after the earth had been ren- 

 dered light and loose by the long drought, I am utterly un- 

 able to say. All I know is, that at the close of a rainy day, 

 the clouds seomed all to come together over the White 

 Mountains, and at midnight discharged their contents at once 

 in a terrible bust of rain, which produced the effects that 

 have now been described. Why these effects were pro- 

 duced now, and never before, is known only to Him who 

 can rend the heavens when he will, and come down and 

 cause the mountains to flow down at his presence. 

 Yours, &c. 



CARLOS WILCOX. 



