The Express.
London, England, 1868-10-20 00:00:00

PORTUGAL.

LISBON, Oor. 19.

The Dicirio of to-day publishes a royal decree
suppeessing the Council of Public Instruction.
This step is said to have been taken from motives
of economy.

AMERICA.
(Per the City of Paris, rid Queenstown.)
NEW YORK. Oar. 10, NOON.

General Sherman has telegraphed to tho War
Department that more troops are necessary to
prevent a protracted Indian war. A torchlight
procession, which took place at Pittsburg, was
attacked by a mob, and a fight ensued, in which
the mayor and several other persons were injured.
The general convention of the episcopal church
of the United Statist and the New Dominion was
opened at Now York on the 7th inst., at which
320 delegates were present, of whom 42 were
bishops.
The Governor of Georgia has issued a circular,
announcing that General Meade has disposed of
the troops so as to preserve the peace, but urges
the citizens to obey the laws, and to maintain
order at the polls.
The Alabama Legislature has adjourned without
enacting any registration law.
An official report from Camilla confirms the pre-
vious reports of General Meade and the local
sheriffs. The report states that there was no evi-
dence that the white republicans had urged the
negroes to violence, but that the riot commenced
through a shot from a drunken white bystander.
The full returns of the Connecticut town elections
show that eighty-six towns were republican,
sixty-nine democratic, and seven were divided.
General M'Clellan received an enthusiastic wel-
come and ovation at Philadelphia on Thursday,
when there was a large procession, composed
principally of the soldiers of the old army of the
Potomac. The general made a speech devoid of
political allusions.
The correspondents of the World and New York

•
DURING the past few weeks we have witnessed
a succession of temptable evidential; of Nature's de-
structive powers. The tires of Vesuvius, the earth-
throes of the sub-equatorial Andes, and the sub-
marine disturbance which has shaken Hawaii, have
presented to us the various forms of destructive
action which the earth's subterranean forces can
assume. In the disastrous floods which have
recently visited the Alpine cantons of Switzerland,
we have evidence of the fact that natural forces,
which we are in the habit of regarding as bene-
ficent and restorative, may exhibit themselves as
agents of the most widespread destruction.
We had occasion to point out lately how enor-
mous is the amount of power of which the
rain-cloud is the representative; and in doing so
we endeavoured to exhibit the contrast between
the steady action of the falling shower and the
energy of the processes of which rain is in reality
the equivalent. But in the floods which have
lately ravaged Switzerland we see the same facts
illustrated, not by numerical calculations or by
the results of philosophical experiments, but in
action, azzd that action taking place on the most
wide ly extended scale. The whole of the south-
eastern, or as it may be termed the Alpine half
of Switzerland, has suffered from these floods. If
a line be drawn from the Lake of Constance, in the
north-east of Switzerland, to the Col de Balme, in
the south-west, it will divide Switzerland into two
nearly equal portions, and scarcely a canton within
the eastern of these divisions has escaped without
great damage.
The cantons which have suffered most terribly
are those of Tessin, Grieons, and St. Gall. The
St. Gothurd, Splugen, and St. liernhardin routes
have been rendered impassable. Twenty-seven
lives were lost in the St. Oothard Pass, besides
horses and waggons full of merchandise. It is
stated that on the three routes upwards of eighty
persons perished. In the village of Loderio alone
no loss than fifty deaths occurred. So terrible a
flood has not taken place since the year 1834. Nor
have the cantons of -Uri and Valais escaped. From
I'nterwalden we hear that the heavy rains which
took place a fortnight ago have carried away
several large bridges, and many of the rivers con-
tinue still very swollen. We have already described
how enormous the material losses are which have
been caused by these floods. Many places are
under water; others in ruins or absolutely de-
stroyed. In Tessin alone the damage is estimated
at forty thousand pounds sterling.
A country. like Switzerland tenet al ways be liable to
the occurrence, from time to time, of catastrophes
of this sort. Or rather, perhaps, we should draw
a distinction between the two divisions of Switzer-
land referred to above. Of these the one may be
termed the mountain half, and the other the lake
half of the country. It is the former portion of
the country which is principally subject to the
dynamical action of water. A long-continued
and heavy rainfall over the higher lands cannot
fail to produce a variety of remarkable effects,
where the arrangement of mountains and passes,
hills, valleys, and ravines is so complicated. There
are places where a large volume of water can
accumulate until the barriers which have op-,
posed its passage to the plains burst under its in-
creasing weight; and then follow those destruc-
tive rushes of water which sweep away whole vil-
lages at once. It is, in fact, the capacity of the
Swiss mountain region for damming up water, far
more than any other circumstance, which renders
the Swiss floods so destructive.

And then it must be remembered that there are
at all times suspended over the plains and valleys
which lie beneath the Alpine ranges enormous
muses of water in the form of snow and ice.
Although in general these suffer no changes but
those due to the partial melting which takes place
in summer, and the renewed accumulation which
takes place in winter• yet when heavy rains fall
upon the lets elevated portions of the Alpine snow,
they not only melt that snow much more
rapidly than the summer sun would do, but they
wash down large masses, which add largely to
the destructive powers of the descending waters.
The most destructive floods which have ti:;:airrel
in Switzerland have usually been those which
take place in early summer. The flood which
inundated the plains of Ilartigny in 1818 were a
remarkable instance of the effects which result
from the natural damming up of largo volumes of
water in the upper parts of the Alpine hill-couu-
try. The whole of the valley of Bagnes, one of
the largest of the lateral branches of the main
valley of the Rhone above Geneva, was
converted into a lake in the spring of
1818, by the damming up of a narrow
pass into which avalanches of snow and ice
had ken precipitated from a lofty glacier over-
hanging the bed of the river Drunso. The icy
barrier enclosed u lake no less than half a league in
It ngth and en eighth of a mile wide, and in places
two hundred feet deep. The inhabitants of the
neighbouring villages were terrified by the danger
which was to be apprehended from the bursting of
the barrier. They cut a gallery seven hundred feet
long through the ice, while the waters bad as yet
risen to but a moderato height ; and when the
waters began to flow through this channel its
course was deepened by the melting of the
ice, and at length nearly half the con-
tents of the lake were safely curried off. It
was hoped that the process would continue, and
the country be saved from the danger which had
been so long impending over it. But as the heat
of the weather mcreased the central part of the
barrier slowly melted away, until it because
too weak to bear the enormous weight of
water which was preening against it. At length
it gave way, so suddenly and completely that all
the water which remained in the lake rushed out
in half an hour. The downward passage of the
water illustrated in a very remarkable way our
view that it is where water is checked in its
outflow that the chief mischief of flooda is occa-
sioned. For it is related that "in the course of
" their descent the waters encountered several nar-
" row gorges, and at each of these they rose to a
" great height, and then burst with new violence
into the next basin, sweeping along forests,
" houses, bridges, and cultivated land.' Along
the greater part of its course the flood resembled
rather a moving mass of rock and mud than a
stream of water. Enormous masses of granite
were torn out of the sides of the valleys and
whirled for hundreds of yards along the course of
the flood. IL EsenEa relates that one of the
fragments thus swept along was no leas than
sixty yards in circumference. At first the water
rushed onwards at the rate of more than a mile in
Lire minutes, and the whole distance (forty-five
miles) which separates the valley of Anna,
from the Lake of Geneva was traversed
in little more than six hours. Thu bodies
of persons who had been drowned in Mar-
tigny were found flouting on the farther
aide of the Lake of Geneva, near Vevey. Thou-
aands of tress wore torn up by the mots, and the
Hearne of buildings which had been overthrown by
the flood were earned down beyond Iffartigny.
In fact, the flood at this point war so high that