THE EARTH. i L-5 



("0 descend, happen but very rarely. There are some ofanotijei 

 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 

 tlie 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 unavoid- 

 able 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 fort- 

 night 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 earth- 

 quake. The same fate, he says, attended Phlegium, one of the 

 highest mountains in Ethiopia ; which after one night's con- 

 cussion \Nas never seen more. In more modem times, a very 

 noted mountain in Jie Molucca islands, known by the name of 

 the Feak, and remarkable for being seen at a very great distance 

 from sea, was swallovi'ed by an earthquake ; and nothing but a 

 ike was left in the place where it stood. Thus, while storms 

 und tempests are levelled against mountains above, earthquakes 

 and waters are undermining them below. All our histories talk 

 of their destruction ; and veiy few new ones (if we except 

 mount Cenere, and one or two such heaps of cinders,) are pro- 

 duced. If mountains, therefore, were of such great utility as 



2 I'lin. lib. iL cap. 93. 



