Herald and news. [volume] (West Randolph, Vt.) 1878-1943, 1889-05-23
AN ALPINE AVALANCHE.
Scene of One of the Terrifying SNOW
slides in Switzerland.


I enjoyed an excellent opportunity
last March of inspecting the interior OF
Staub- Lawine, or snow dust avalanche,
which fell in the valleys of Dayos be-
low the village of Glarus At its deep
est point it lay about sixty feet above
the post-road, and n gallery had been
bored through it with great labor Tor
the passage of sledges. The walls OF
this tunnel were a compact mass Oh
compressed snow, which the wori1Gen
cut INTO with pickaxes. You coulu
make no impression on it with your
fingers, and the marks of tho pick We're
as sharp as on block of marble. 1 no
ticed the following objects imbedded IN
the portion of the avalanche exposed 70
view: Large and small fragments OF
gneiss and limestone; occasionally q
huge bowlder; trunks of trees, mostly
larch and pine, sawn flush with the
snow walls; branches, innumerable
twigs of cembra. iarcli, spruce, fir and
alder, so evenly distributed over the
whole surface that the trees from which
they had been torn must have been
stripped by the whirl of wind ana snow
dust; these fragments were so firmly
clutched that you could not scoop them
out; lastly, and most impressive, mas
sise blocks of pure, transparent ice, one
Of them six feet in length, three feet In
depth, and how broad / do not know.
The ice must have been torn by the
blast from frozen waterfalls in the gull
lies of the Rutschtobel. The avalanche
probably started at some three thousand
n Il
from q district known as the Ausscr-
berg, which is dominated by the two
peaks OF the Leidbachhorn and Aelphli-
horn. 1t was clear ON seeing how
stones, stems, branches, twigs, blocks
of ice, ETC., were firmly wrought into
the snow mass that mans body would
be inextricably clasped by the frozen
substance. Standing in the gallery and
rejecting on these things, remembered
with thrill Of awe that somewhere or
n other, at no great distance, the corpse
Of a man lay actually imbedded there.
He was called Caspar Valar, and he had
been buried in the avalanche upon Feb
ruary 18th. Gangs of peasants TO the
number of fifty had dug necessarily for
seven days in the hope of alighting on
his body.
Passing along the road, we had seen
them at the stream side. sounding the
snow with poles, breaking it up with
pickaxes, and delying into it with spades;
and their sad, resigned faces told how
they sorrowed for their comrade. His
fate might so easily be theirs, too The
savage Alpine winter claims its victims
yearly. Therefore, "Hodi tibi, cras
mihi, quod eras sum quod es ero" Ito
day for thee, tomorrow for me; what
thou vast / am, what thou art shall
be-, seemed written ON their earnest
features. At last this labor Of the search,
willingly and without wage given by the
men of Glarus, had TO be abandoned AS
Caspar Valar was left to slumber in
his icy sepulcher until the melting avail
anche relaxed its hold in springtime.
His widow, meanwhile, with two young
children, went ON living in their wooden 1
chalet on the hill which oyerlooks the :
dreadful thing which robbed her of her ,
husband. On May Sd she gave birth to
a stillborn child, and on the same day 4
her husbands corpse was brought tc 4
light He had been carried across tho /
stream by the rush of the Staub-Lawine,
aud his body was in excellent preserva-
iion.-C0rahW Magazine.