Connecticut western news., 1881-10-12
The Landslip in Switzerland.

The Geneva correspondent of the London Times sends the following &C., count of the recent catastrophe at Elm by which between one hundred and fifty and two hundred lives were lost:
 "Next to the rain, the chief cause of the terrible catastrophe which has over- whelmed Elm is said to be injudicious quarryiog for slate, whereby the noun tain was in part undermined, and so rendered unsafe. Some three years ago ominous signs of danger were ob- served, and the cantonal forest mas- ter Herr Seeli warned the proprietor of the quarries that they were carrying on their excavations beyond the bounds of safety. The work went on without in. terruption until last Thursday, when the premonitions of disaster became so alarming that all the men were with. drawn from the quarries; yet no one seems to have thought the village was in danger until Sunday af f5ernoon, when, as the people were coming from church, @ quantity of stones rolling from the Ischlngel crushed several houses in Un- terthal nearest the foot of the Alp Ten minutes later came the great catastrophe a thunderous noise rent the air, black dust cloud overspread the valley, and all was still. In two or three seconds Underthal had disap- peared, and with it were buried nearly every one of the unfortunates, who a few minutes previously were worship ping in the village church. Scarcely any, in fact, who on the first alarm crossed the Sernft, either out of curios- ity or fear, to lend helping hand to those whose houses had been struck, es. caped, and they include nearly all of the manhood of the village.
 'The proprietor of the Elm Hotel was thrown by the concussion of air from the iron bridge over the Sernft into the stream and drowned. His brother, who had reached the Unterthal side, was crushed beneath fragment of rock. In one house there was christening party of fifteen persons, most kinsfolk, all of whom, save the child's father, were killed at one stroke he was bereft of family relatives and estate. His house is gone, and his fields are buried under the wreck of the mountain From tbe first, rescue, though energetically at- tempted, was seen to be hopeless rocks and earth are piled over Unterthal to ho;oht of 60 fook op1 tho arao ooxo,ol by the debris is computed at from six to eight square miles. The statement that two or three of the victims had been taken from the ruins alive has not been confirmed, and the dead are mutil- ated beyond the possibility of recogni- tion. It adds another pang to the grief of the Der eaved to know that even il their dead should be found they will be unable to claim them.
 "A correspondent of the Neue Zu- richer Zeitun9, who visited Elm on Tuesday, describes the scene as weird, wild and melancholy beyond the power of words to express. Above the rolling clouds which hung about the skirts of the mountains rose the white summit of the Plattenberg. Every few minutes a great fragment of rock thundered down the side of the Tschingler Alp. Where Unterthal had been was a mass of stones and earth as high all the church steeple. A great part of the village on the other side of the stream was under water, and the Sernft, forced from its bed, was vaiuly dashlng itself against the Instructions that barred it's way. Through driving rain men were carrying shapeless bodies and laying them in the church, one of the few buildings which have escaped destruction. A weeping woman was searching among the ruins for some vestige of her lost little ones, and an old man, whose wife, children, and grand children had all perished together, was wandering about needless of every thing, praying that the rocks might crush him also. But except these two the viii lagers, fearing another earthslip, had fed"