MOUNTAIN STORMS. 
229 
can resist ; even horses are borne away in the 
mighty vortex, being elevated many feet into the air 
and dashed over the mountain’s brow. The na- 
tives take shelter, on these occasions, in nooks 
under the projections of the hills ; but even here 
they are exposed to great danger, as the superin- 
cumbent masses occasionally give way, sweeping them 
down the precipice to certain destruction. 
It sometimes happens that whole villages are de- 
stroyed by those dreadful hurricanes, some of the 
lesser cones of the hills being dislocated and cast into 
the valleys, involving houses and inhabitants in one 
common ruin. An event of this kind happened a 
few years before Captain Turner’s visit to Boutan. 
One night, during the frightful climax of one of 
those mountain storms, nine houses were dashed 
from the brow of a hill upon which they had been 
erected but a few years previously, and their unhappy 
inmates, whilst reposing in imagined security, were 
buried beneath the ruins : none remained alive to 
tell the tale of signal disaster. Unawed, however, 
by so terrible a warning, another village was subse- 
quently built in the same locality ; nor does the 
slightest apprehension appear to be entertained of the 
recurrence of a similar accident. 
So accustomed are these mountaineers from in- 
fancy to the numerous perils of those elevated re- 
gions, that they cease to regard them, and being all 
predestinarians, they consider themselves as secure 
when the hurricane roars around their dwellings as 
when the sun shines upon them, and the fresh morn- 
ing breeze fans their cheeks with a gentle touch that 
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