The Kenosha telegraph. [volume] (Kenosha, Wis.) 1860-1888, 1875-02-18
A SNOW-SLIDE.
Vivid Description of the Little Cottonwood
Avalanche


Avalanche.
[From the Salt Lake Herald.l
A miner of Little Cottonwood, who
saw the descent Of the recent snow-slides
in that canon, thus describes it !:
There goes snow-slide - exclaimed
my companion, as, in the midst of a
heavy sleet, we assembled the canon where
we had been assisting in the exhuming of
the corpse OF victim, at the scene of a
late disaster. "Do you not hear it e.
and shri1 whistling sound which at
tracted my attention, deepened into a
low, gutteral-hke roar, increasing in
volume and power at every instant, until
the artillery of Stone River seemed but
a whisper in comparison.
"Where is it?" I hurriedIy asked,
while the air at that distance seemed to
tremble in consonance with the motion
of monster still invisible.
From the bed of Little Cottonwood a
smooth incline rises at an angle of twenty
degrees from the horizontal terminating
in perpendicular somber wall / 1000 feet
in height, which is again surmounted by
receding quartzite cliffs, through which
two narrow gorges cut their way, diver
ging in different directions, and, making
a scallop in the horizon, are lost to view.
Amidst the blood-curdling uproar the
phenomena were invisible till the gorges
at the summit filed the level with the
moving snow. Rocks, as if in rage at
their inability to stand the shock, gave
way from their foundations with an
audible growl Clumps of trees, CEN
turies in maturing, snapped like stubble,
their dark branches describing the undu-
lations Of the surface as though a strug-
gle for existence was theirs until
overtaken by some more powerful
wave of the avalanche. They sink
gradually and disappear jutting crags
of quartzite shake off their disconnected
portions, which, trmbling down their
Jagged sides, bury themselves noiselessly
In the moving masses that, having united
at the converging point, rush toward the
edge of the abyss with increased fury
Nothing more terrible than the successive
plunges of the disconnected portions of
the avalanche over the precipice can well
be conceived. Compressed by contact
with obstacles in its course, the van of
the volume has attained the soidity of
ice. Retarded by variations of the in
cline, it seems to pause on the edge of
the precipice as though in sensitive
dread of the terrible shock which awaited
! it. Impelled by the tremendous pressure
behind, it juts over the gulf unsupported
a distance of fifty feet, until, severed by
its own tremendous weight, it strikes the
earth with q crash only neutralized by
the uproar above it. With duller thud
and an irregular roar for an echo each
separate descending body alighted on its
predecessor, piling higher and higher at
each successive descent, as preparing for
the grandest tableau of the sublime spec
tacle. Higher and higher, until assum-
ing the proportions of majestic column,
it conceals the bluff behind it half dis
tant to the top.
CIVIL it fall?" asked my companion,
as transfixed by the phenomena he utters
the first words that have escaped him.
eyes, it must fall. See, it is swaying
already" Great God, what scene
Colossal in it's magnitude, yet symmet-
rical in proportion to the scenery in re-
lief superb to the vision, indescribable
in it's destruction. A swaying motion, a
graceful sweep, a boom indispensable in
power, the crags and canons no mute
auditors of the performance. In tones
of thunder they hurl back their applause.