THE EARTH. 69 



HOWCVM, these slips, when a whole mountain's side seems to de 

 scend, happen but very rarely. There are some of another kind, 

 however, much more common ; and, as they are always sudden, much 

 more dangerous. These are snow-slips, well known, and greatly 

 dreaded by travellers. It often happens, that when snow has long 

 been accumulated on the tops and on the sides of mountains, it is 

 borne down the precipice, either by means of tempests, or its own 

 melting. At first, when loosened, the volume in motion is but small ; 

 but gathers as it continues to roll ; and, by the time it has reached 

 the habitable parts of the mountain, is generally grown of enormous 

 bulk Wherever it rolls, it levels all things in its way ; or buries them 

 in unavoidable destruction. Instead of rolling, it sometimes is found 

 to slide along from the top ; yet even thus it is generally as fatal as 

 before. Nevertheless, we have had an instance, a few years ago, of a 

 small family in Germany, that lived for above a fortnight beneath one 

 of these snow-slips. Although they were .buried during that whole 

 time, in utter darkness, and under a bed of some hundred feet deep, 

 yet they were luckily taken out alive ; the weight of the snow being 

 supported by a beam that kept up the roof; and nourishment being 

 supplied them by the milk of an ass, if I remember right, that was 

 buried under the same ruin. 



But it is not the parts alone that are thus found to subside, whole 

 mountains have been known totally to disappear. Pliny tells us,* 

 that in his own time, the lofty mountain of Cybotus, together with the 

 city of Eurites, were swallowed by an earthquake. The same fate, 

 he says, attended Phlegium, one of the highest mountains in Ethiopia; 

 which, after one night's concussion, was never seen more. In more 

 modern times, a very noted mountain in the Molucca islands, known 

 by the name of the Peak, and remarkable for being seen at a very great 

 distance from sea, was swallowed by an earthquake ; and nothing but 

 a lake was left in the place where it stood. Thus, while storms and 

 tempests are levelled against mountains above, earthquakes and waters 

 are undermining them below. All our histories talk of their destruc- 

 tion ; and a very few new ones (if we except Mount Cenere, and one 

 or two such heaps of cinders) are produced. If mountains, therefore, 

 were of such great utility as some philosophers make them to man- 

 kind, it would be a very melancholy consideration that such benefits 

 were diminishing every day. But the truth is, the valleys are fer 

 tilized by that earth which is washed from their sides ; and the plains 

 become richer, in proportion as the mountains decay. 



CHAPTER XIII. 



OP WATER. 



IN contemplating nature, we shall often find the same substances 

 possessed of contrary qualities, and producing opposite effects. Aii, 

 which liquifies <me substance, dries up another. That fire whiclj i* 



Plin. 1. ii. cap. 93. 



