THE EARTH. 6? 



In this manner almost all the tops of the highest mountains are bar 

 and pointed. And this naturally proceeds from their being so continu- 

 ally assaulted by thunder and tempests. All the earthy substances 

 with which they might have been once covered, have for ages been 

 washed away from their summits ; and nothing is left remaining but 

 immense rocks, which no tempest has hitherto been able to destroy. 



Nevertheless, time is every day, and every hour, making depreda- 

 tions ; and huge fragments are seen tumbling down the precipice, 

 either loosened from the summit by frost or rains, or struck down by 

 lightning. Nothing can exhibit a more terrible picture than one 

 of these enormous rocks, commonly larger than a house, falling from 

 its height, with a noise louder than thunder, and rolling down the side 

 of the mountain. Doctor Plot tells us of one in particular, which be- 

 ing loosened from its bed, tumbled down the precipice, and was part- 

 ly shattered into a thousand pieces. Notwithstanding, one of the larg- 

 est fragments of the same, still preserving its motion, travelled over the 

 plain below, crossed a rivulet in the midst, and at last stopped on the 

 other side of the bank ! These fragments, as was said, are often struck 

 off by lightning, and sometimes undermined by rains ; but the most 

 usual manner in which they are disunited from the mountain, is by 

 frost : the rains insinuating between the interstices of the mountain, 

 continue there until there comes a frost, and then, when converted 

 into ice, the water swells with an irresistible force, and produces the 

 same effect as gunpowder, splitting the most solid rocks, and thus 

 shattering the summits of the mountain. 



But not rocks alone, but whole mountains are, by various causes, 

 disunited from each other. We see in many parts of the Alps, amaz- 

 ing clefts, the sides of which so exactly correspond with the opposite, 

 that no doubt can be made of their having been once joined together. 

 At Cajeta,* in Italy, a mountain was split in this manner by an earth- 

 quake ; and there is a passage opened through it, that appears as 

 if elaborately done by the industry of man. In the Andes these 

 breaches are frequently seen. That at Thermopylae, in Greece, has 

 been long famous. The mountain of the Troglodytes, in Arabia, has 

 thus a passage through it : and that in Savoy, which Nature began, 

 and which Victor Amadeus completed, is an instance of the same kind. 



We have accounts of some of these disruptions, immediately after 

 their happening. " In the month of June,t in the year 1714, a part 

 of the mountain of Diableret, in the district of Valais, in France, sud- 

 denly fell down, between two and three o'clock in the afternoon, the 

 weather being very calm and serene. It was of a conical figure, and 

 destroyed fifty-five cottages in the fall. Fifteen persons, together 

 with about a hundred beasts, were also crushed beneath its ruins, which 

 covered an extent of a good league square. The dust it occasioned 

 /nstantly covered all the neighbourhood in darkness. The heaps 

 of rubbish were more than three hundred feet high. They stopped 

 ihc current of a river that ran along the plain, which now is formed 

 into several new and deep lakes. There appeared through the whole 

 of tnis rubbish, none of those substances that seemed to indicate that 



* Buffoii. vol. ii. p 364 A Hist, de 1'Academie des Scien-s, p. 1. an. 1711 



