5o6 



NA TURE 



{Sept. 30, 1880 



bodily fonvard on the beach, breaking up into segments 

 in its progress, and carrying fields, trees, and houses 

 along with it. Unquestionably the most appalling disaster 

 of the kind which has happened in recent times was the 

 celebrated Fall of the Rossberg in 1806, a mountain 

 lying behind the Rigi, and composed like it of sandstone 

 and congloinerate. In this case also there had been 

 much previous heavy rain, which, filtering along a porous 

 sandy bed inclined at a steep angle towards the valley, 

 undermined the support of the overlying thick sheet of 

 massive conglomerate. The whole hill-side gave way 

 and several villages and hamlets, with somewhere between 

 800 and 900 people, were buried under the ruins. To this 

 day the scar on the slope of the mountain is unhealed, 

 and the piles of huge angular blocks, even to the further 

 side of the valley, remain as memorials of the homesteads 

 and villagers that lie buried below. 



The recent catastrophe at Naini Tal is another illustra- 

 tion of the same geological process. The locality is 

 situated on the soft Tertiary deposits which flank the 

 sub-metamorphic and more ancient crystalline rocks of 

 the Himalaya range that towers behind. It possesses 

 one of the few known sheets of water on the Hima- 

 layan slopes, nesthng among irregularly shaped hills. 

 There is every reason to believe that these hills have 

 derived their present contour not only from extensive 

 denudation by the heavy rainfall, but also from the 

 operation of former landslips, and that the lake itself, 

 to which the place has owed so much of its attractiveness, 

 lies in a hollow formed by the same cause. It has been 

 suggested that the late accident arose from the cutting of 

 a roadway along the base of the hill. But this seems an 

 altogether improbable and unnecessary supposition. The 

 structure of the ground is itself sufficient to account for 

 landslips, apart altogether from the mere superficial inter- 

 ference of any road-making. According to the telegraphic 

 reports there had been a particularly heavy rain, no less 

 than twenty-five inches having fallen in forty hours. The 

 annual rainfall at Naini Tal is stated to be ninety inches, 

 so that more than a quarter of the whole yearly rain fell 

 in less than two days. But this year, at least, the rainfall 

 must have been greater, for Mr. Commissioner Taylor, 

 who was charged with the care of the roads in the district 

 and met his death in the recent catastrophe, wrote on 

 August 17 last that eighty inches of rain had fallen in the 

 previous two months. By such a violent downpour the 

 loose soil is swept off the surface, deep gashes are cut 

 down the slopes, and every streamlet and river is converted 

 into a torrent of liquid mud. Cut the furrowed soils and 

 rocks likewise absorb much moisture. The water launched 

 in such a deluge over the ground soaks at once into the 

 more permeable gravelly layers and saturates them. 

 When these are inclined towards lower ground and 

 covered with heavy masses of earth or rock, the conditions 

 for the production of landslips are supplied to the full. 

 And such seems to have been the case in this melancholy 

 Indian disaster. 



The question arises. Can any steps be taken to guard 

 against a repetition of the calamity ? We may take it for 

 granted that Naini Tal, in spite of its recent visitation, 

 will continue to be a favourite resort from the arid plains 

 below. The chance of an occasional destructive landslip 

 will not deter men from coming year after year to gain 



renewed health and rest in the pure air of these uplands. 

 It is obviously impossible to prevent landslips, except 

 such minor falls as could not do any extensive damage. 

 The only resource is to fix the sites of stations and houses 

 on such spots as will either be free from risk of accident 

 or on which the risk will be reduced to a minimum. 

 This is mainly a geological question, but it is evidently- 

 one of the utmost social importance. Among the able 

 staff of the Geological Survey of India there is no doubt 

 an officer whose services could be made available to 

 examine and report upon the structure of the ground at 

 Naini Tal with special reference to this question. There 

 ought to be first a careful inquiry into the details of the 

 causes that led to the recent sad event, and with the 

 experience thus gained a further inquiry into the safety 

 of the other parts of the settlement and of other hill- 

 stations similarly placed. Even in a district liable to 

 destructive landslips sites for houses can probably be so 

 chosen and defended as to be practically exempt from 

 liability to such calamitous visitations as that which we 

 now so heartily deplore. The prodigious amount of rain 

 which in a few days or hours deluges the ground in these 

 regions presents an engineering problem which demands 

 actual Indian experience on the part of those who would 

 successfully grapple with it. Neither geologists nor 

 engineers accustomed only to the comparatively mild 

 rain-storms of Europe can probably realise the magnitude 

 of the difficulty which such disasters as that of Naini Tal 

 presents for their consideration. 



ARCTIC NEWS 



THE past week has been an unusually interesting one 

 so far as Arctic matters are concerned. First of 

 all we have tidings of the return of the Franklin Search 

 Expedition, sent out from the United States about two 

 years ago, to follow up and unearth if possible some 

 important relics of the Franklin expedition, said to exist 

 among the Eskimo. It may be remembered that up- 

 wards of two years ago news reached this country that 

 Mr. Barry, the mate of an American whaler, was told by 

 some Nechelli Eskimo whom he met at Whale Point, 

 Hudson's Bay, that some spoons with Franklin's crest 

 upon them, possessed by the Eskimo, were received from a 

 party of white men who passed a winter near their settle- 

 ment, where they all died ; and that these men left a 

 number of books with writing in them, which were 

 buried. The tale seemed very doubtful, and those 

 best acquainted with the history of Franklin search 

 expeditions considered that it was scarcely necessary to act 

 on the gossip of the Eskimo. However, the people of the 

 United States, who have all along manifested a generous 

 enthusiasm in behalf of the Franklin expedition, thought 

 otherwise, and by private enterprise an expedition was 

 sent out in the summer of 1878, under Lieut. Schwatka, 

 to follow up the traces indicated by the Eskimo. This 

 expedition, after an absence of two years, has just 

 returned, and although the success, so far as its imme- 

 diate object is concerned, has not been great, it has 

 evidently been able to make important additions to a 

 knowledge of the condition of the inhospitable Arctic 

 region traversed, a region rendered classical, if not 

 sacred, by the early and terrible work of Franklin him- 



