The News-Herald. [volume] (Hillsboro, Highland Co., Ohio) 1886-1973, 1889-06-20
DEATH AND DESTRUCTION.
The Terrible Effects OF an Avalanche Dee
scribed by an English Traveller.

The Terrible Effects OF an Avalanche DEE
scribed by an English Traveller.
/ enjoyed an excellent opportunity
last March Of inspecting the interior
of Staub-Lawine, or snow-dust ava
1anche, which fell in the valley OF
Davos below the village OF Glarus.
AT its deepest point it lay about sixty
feet above the post road, and gallery
had been bored through It with great
labor for the passage Of sledges. The
walls Of this tunnel were compact
mass Of compressed snow, which the,
workmen cut into with pickaxes. You
could make no impression on 1t with
your fingers, and the marks OF the
pick were as sharp as on block OF
marble. ! noticed the following OBJ
5ects imbedded in the portion OF the
avalanche exposed to view: Large
and small fragments Of gneiss and
limestone; occasionally q large boul-
der; trunks Of trees, mostly larch and
pine, sawn flush with the snow walls;
branches, innumerable twigs Of cem-
bra, larch, spruce, fir and alder, 50
evenly distributed over the whole sur
face that the trees from which they
had been torn must have been stripped
by the whirl Of wind and snow
dust; these fragments were 80
firmly clutched that you could not
scoop them out; lastly, and most i'm.
pressive, massive blocks OF pure trans
parent ice, one OF them six feet in
length. three feet in depth, and how
broad do not know. This ice must
have been torn by the blast from
frozen waterfalls in the gullies Of the
Rutschtobel. The avalanche prob
ably started at some three thousand
feet above the Landwasser, descend
ing from q district known as the
Ausserberg, which is dominated by
the two peaks of the Leidbachhorn and
Aelplihorn. It was clear on seeing
how stone, stems, branches, twigs,
blocks OF ice, ETC., were firmly
wrought into the snow mass that o
mans body would be inextricably
clasped by the same frozen substance.
Standing in the gallery and rejecting
on these things, remembered with
thrill of awe that somehow or another,
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
February Z. Gangs of peasants to the
number of fifty had dug incessantly
for seven days in the hopes 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 pick
axes, and delving into it with spades;
and their sad, resigned faces told how
they sorrowed for their comrade. His
fate might 80 easily be theirs, too! The
savage Alpine winter claims its vic
Tins yearly. Therefore. hodie tibi
cras n,tht, quod eras sum quod ss Gro
(to-day for thee. tomorrow for me;
what thou vast I am, what thou art I
shall be) seemed written on their earn
est features. At last this labor OF the
search, willingly and without wage
given by the men of Glarus. had to be
abandoned as impracticable. Caspar
Valar was left to slumber in his icy
sepulcher until the melting avalanche
relaxed its hold in spring-time. His
widow, meanwhile, with two young
children, went on living in their wood
en- chalet on the hill which overlooks
the dreadful thing which robbed her
of her husband. On the Sd of May she
gave birth to a stillborn child, and on
the same day her husbands corpse
was brought to light. He had been
carried across the stream by the rush
of the Staub-Lawine and his body was
IN excellent preservation. -Cornhill