220 Miscellaneous Notices of Mountain Scenery, <^c. 



pass, except on foot. The first traveller who came to the 

 Willey house, (which is very near where Mr. and Mrs. W. and 

 party, ended their difficuh journey, on horseback, nearly thirty 

 years ago,) found it empty of its inhabitants, and in the 

 course of a few days the mangled bodies of seven out of nine, 

 were found about fifty or sixty rods from the house, buried 

 beneath the drift wood and mountain ruins, on the bank of 

 the Saco, or rather in the midst of what was for the time, a 

 vast raging torrent, uniting one mountain barrier to the other. 

 The effects of the torrents, which on that occasion descend- 

 ed from the mountains, now form a most conspicuous and 

 interesting feature in the scenery. 



May 20th, 9 P.M. 



We have passed the day in the Notch of the Mountains, 

 examining the scenery, tiie geology, and the ruins. The 

 avalanches were very numerous ; they were not, however, 

 ruptures of the main foundation rock of the mountain, 

 but slides, from very steep declivities; beginning, in many 

 instances, at the very mountain top, and carrying down, in 

 one promiscuous and frightful ruin, forests, and shrubs, and 

 the earth which sustained them; stones and rocks innumer- 

 able, and many of great size, such as would fill each a com- 

 mon apartment: the slide took every thing with it, down to 

 the solid mountain rock, and being produced by torrents of 

 water, which appear to have burst like water spouts upon 

 the mountains, after they had been thoroughly soaked with 

 heavy rains, thus loosening all the materials that were not 

 sohd, and the trees pushed and wrung by fierce winds, acted 

 as so many levers, and prepared every thing for the awful 

 catastrophe. No tradition existed of any slide in former 

 times, and such as are now observed to have formerly 

 happened, had been completely veiled by forest growth 

 and shrubs. At length, on the 28th of June, two months 

 before the fatal avalanche, there was one not far from 

 the Willey house, which so far alarmed the family, that 

 they erected an encampment a little distance from their 

 dwelling, intending it as a place of refuge. On the fatal 

 night, it was impenetrably dark and frightfully tempest- 

 uous ; the lonely family had retired to rest, in their hum- 

 ble dwelling, six miles from the nearest human creature. 

 The avalanches descended in every part of the gulf, for a 

 distance of two miles ; and a very heavy one began on the 



