CLEAR WATERS 



through pine forests and picnicked at an old bear- 

 hunter's hut. Thence proceeding, we reached a 

 valley village crossing at its entrance a little brook we 

 scarcely noticed, it was so insignificant. Just after 

 reaching the rustic inn, early in the afternoon, one of 

 the most fearful storms I have ever seen, either in the 

 old or the new world, burst upon the devoted spot, 

 accompanied by terrific thunder and lightning, while 

 the rain fell for three or four hours in solid sheets. 

 Possibly what the Americans call a cloudburst occurred 

 higher up. For within that period the trifling brook 

 had become a raging torrent, rolling great rocks before 

 it through the village as if they had been packing- 

 cases. The village itself was on a slope and no great 

 damage was done to the buildings, but the entire 

 breadth of tillage and meadow lands filling the floor 

 of the narrow valley, and on which the inhabitants 

 depended for their livelihood, was absolutely de- 

 stroyed ; not merely the crops of the year, which would 

 have meant mere temporary disaster, but the soil was 

 washed clean away and nothing left but the hard sterile 

 pan, littered with great deposits of sand and gravel 

 and masses of rocks and boulders. The despair of the 

 unfortunate people was dreadful, and it was in truth 

 a most harrowing scene, being unprecedented in the 

 experience of that generation. The women flung 

 themselves on their knees or rushed wildly hither and 

 thither with their menfolk. It fell to my father, 

 the only man remaining of our now diminished party, 

 to be the recipient, in the excitement of the moment, 

 of many woebegone out-pourings which I witnessed. 

 When we got home he wrote to the papers and got 

 42 



