32a JOURNEY OVER MOUNT GOTTHARD. 



fpring-feafon, when all thefe mountains are covered 

 deep with fnow, this fnow mould fuddenly be diffolved 

 by a warm wind or the eruption of fubterraneous fire. 

 . Here then lies a dormant power, but ealily put into 

 motion, againfr. which the combined forces of mankind 

 are to be accounted exactly for nothing. Indeed only 

 he who attentively confiders the frame of the moun- 

 tains, can form any clear conception of fuch violent 

 revolutions. Yet even he who has not perfonally vi- 

 fited the mountains, may gain fome notion of them 

 from the records of hiftory. Far-fpread inundations 

 and ravages of whole countries, limilar to the floods 

 of Deucalion and Ogyges, have happened in various 

 places. For proofs in miniature of what I am here 

 fpeaking of we need only turn to what Bougner, in his 

 account of Peru, relates concerning the floods which 

 .have at times been occafioned there by the eruption of 

 • burning mountains covered witli fnow. By the like 

 eruptions of water it has happened that all flat coun- 

 tries are raifed fo high with heaps of fand, earth and 

 Hones ; for what is the ground on which we dwell and 

 on which our fields are cultivated, but a heap of rub- 

 bifh fpread abroad from mountains overthrown ? 

 Thefe in many places lie feveral hundred feet above 

 the original furface of the natural earth. 



The consideration of the fecond of the foregoing 

 remarks is more agreeable. Every high mountain is a 

 magazine, from whence the wife creator of the world, 

 . by arrangements limple indeed, but never enough to 

 be admired, diftributes to lands remote and near, to 

 animals and vegetables, the moft important neceffary, 

 water. Nothing would be more incomprehenfible ta 



the 



