The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1879-05-10 00:00:00

DISASTER AND DEATH ON THE
SIMPLON.

The Daily News of Tuesday publishes the following letter,
from their Correspondent at Remo :
Nowhere has this exceptionally severe spring been
felt so acutely as on the mountain passes between
Switzerland and Italy. Only a few hours' journey
from the spot where Her Majesty has been
enjoying her villeggiatura occurred a scene of
disaster and death rarely paralleled in those
regions of snowdrift and avalanche. The Simplon
pass is the route by which more than ten thousand
Italian workmen annually make their way into
Switzerland and France in quest of employment,
and it was on some thirty-two of these wayfarers that
the visitation descended from which nothing but the
noble heroism of the poor monks of the Hospice could
have saved them. Thanks to that institution and its
attendants, only one out of the thirty-two Italians lost
his life, although three of the men ettached to it have
been engulphed in the avalanche, and will not be found
till the melting snows have unshrouded their bodies on
the mountain side.
Such was the snowfall on the 2nd inst. that the
courier could not prosecute his journey with sledges.
A stalwart pedestrian offered to take the letter-
bags, and after herculean efforts he reached the
Hospice about eleven a.m., and *ere found seventy
Italian workmen, en route partly for Switzerland,
partly for France. He was forthwith interro-
gated as to the state of the road, and to their
question as to whether they could go on without
danger he replied that if they wanted to start
they must do so that very day, as every minute's
postponement increased the risk from the snow-
fall. Accordingly, three companies orthese Italians,
consisting respectively of fifteen, ten, and nine persons
set out at once, and by one in the afternoon arrived at
Refuge 6, where they rested for a little, as the snow
was coming down with increasing force and density.
Two sturdy Swiss youths attached to the Refuge
offered to conduct the travellers, and off the three
companies set once more, with their two guides at
their head. Scarcely, however, had they emerged
from the middle gallery called La Vieille Gal6rie
—the most dangerous part of the Simplon route—
when an enormous avalanche descended from the
mountain, carrying with it the two guides and an
Italian workman who walked beside them. The
rest of the travellers who remained in the gallery were
so far safe, but they soon saw the terrible predicament
they were in, no longer able to advance or retrace
their steps, as both ends of the gallery were blocked
up with snow. They were in aespair, and already the
cold was beginning to tell on the children of the party,
and cries of misery resounded through the living
tomb. Suddenly a man's voice rose above the wail-
ing: "We might as well die under an avalanche as
under a gallery. Let us try and get out." And so
without further parley he set to work and succeeded
in excavating a passage through the snow, and
arrived halt dead at Refuge 6, whence the
alarm was passed on to the Hospice. By this
time it was half-past seven in the evening. The
monks attached to the Hospice lost no time in re-
pairing to the scene of disaster, and, with the aid of
two servants of Refuge 6, they succeeded about half-
past nine, two hours after they had set out, in saving
the inmates of the gallery, and accommodating them
comfortably at the Hospice, leaving a few whose
strength could carry them no further at the refuge.
The names of the monks, who with such heroism and
success came to the rescue of thirty-two Italians are—
the Rev. Angelo Carron, prior of the Hospice • and
the Revs. Eugenio Carron, Valentine Ritusis,
and lunocente Fellay. The three companies of
travellers having been settled for the night, the
monks were anxious to return, and do what could
be done for the two guides and their com-
panion who had been carried away by the avalanche;
but considering the darkness, and the constant suc-
cession of avalanches that were thundering at short
intervals over the precipices, they reluctantly
abandoned the attempt. The prior was still in doubt
as to how many, or how few, had disappeared with
the guides, some of the survivors saying that four,
some that three, some that two of their number were
missing, when next morning he addressed the heads
of the three companies, and by dint of patient
interrogatories, put to each of them separately,
he satisfied himself that only one Italian had
joined the guides—one Maurizio Uccelli, from
the neighbourhood of Intra, on the Lego Mag-
giore, the father of five children, the eldest of
whom is a private in the Italian army. Every effort
Was male to rescue this man, but in vain; and his
body will not be found till the melting of the snows
have left it stranded somewhere. One of the two
guides, a youth named Blatter, quite an athlete in
strength and nimbleness, managed, as he rolled down
with the avalanche, to keep his alpenstock in his
hand, and when he came to a dead stop he felt that
the point of his stick just protruded from the surface
of the snow above him. Working away with what
strength remained to him he succeeded, after some
three hours, in extricating himself from the avalanche,
but there his powers failed him, and he WAB only
able to call for help across the silent snow. Fortu-
nately his cries reached the Refuge, and its inmate,
with a servant of the Hospice, who had stopped at the
Refuge on his way to the Hospice with provisions, set
out in the direction of the guide. But they had net
walked five minutes when an immense avalanche
hurled them to the foot of the mountain. The in-
mate of the Refuge perished, leaving a young widow
and a two-years-old boy. The servant of the Hospice,
however, escaped; though, when rolling with the
avalanche, he thought he would have died every
minute from the snow and earth that found its
way into his mouth, and was like to choke him. He
succeeded in turning on his face, and in so relieving
himself of the mauvaise bouchs. till, the avalanche
having stopped, he ciieengaged himself from the snow,
and after severe efforts regained the refuge in a
fainting state about two in the morning. During that
terrible night he said the roar of the descending
avalanches was deafening.
M. Borter, of Brieg, who superintends the work-
men employed ia clearing away the snow from the
Simplon, says that this is the eighth time within a few
years that deaths have occurred by the avalanches on
the spot above described, i.e., in the exit from the so-
called middle gallery. If, he adds, that gallery were
prolonged by but a few metres, these deplorable
accidents with all their distressing consequences would
cease.