The daily morning journal and courier., 1895-11-27
rHE oRlsn or 4 a1AoIER.
Another Sensational Catastrophe in the
 Alua,
From tho London Tlmea,l

CTS WHO nave been lfaVellnS TOT the last two or three months over the pop ular and magnificent Gemmi Pass have had little notion of what catastrophe was hanging over their heads, in a far more terrible form than the sword of Damocles, during the time of their transit over the three kilometers of the well-kept bridle path passing to the left of the well-known ohalets of Spi- talmatte, at about 6,250 feet above the sea, and at about three hours from Kandersteg, on the Bernese side of the pass, The fine glacier which so many l have admired, clinging high up on the very neck of the snowy Altels, and just beneath It's spotless white pyramid of | 1l,93O feet elevation, must have had, it | appears, about a third of it's mass some l,25O cubic meters, it has been call culated-in a perilous condition for some time, ready to launch itself some five thousand feet down in an ice and rock cataract. Frightful as is the ac- tual catastrophe, it might have many more victims had it not been for the lateness of the season and the early hour of the day at which it occurred It is supposed that the almost unprece- dented long summer and the late eX- traordinary heats had such a liquefy- ing effect on the glacier as to dissolve what cohesion still attached the totter- ing mass to the rest of the glacier, un- til it at last gave way.
 The actual rupture of the huge mass took place at 4:45 in the morning of Wednesday, the 11th, but drivers of carriages on the Kandersteg road de- clare that they heard crash and felt a shock like an earthquake at mid night. What were the immediate prog nostics of the catastrophe will prob ably never be known, as all the suffer- CTS have perished. The rush of air caused by the fall was felt at Handlers teg, three hours off and the noise of the fall was heard at F'rutigen, which is six hours off The field of the disas- ter comprises about two square miles, and stretches from Schopf, in the gorge of the Schwarenbach under the Stier- enhergli up to the border of the Valais district, and even to the range of the Gellihorn, the picturesque mountain which overhangs Kandersteg, and round the base of which the road be- gins its windings up to the Gemmf
 The district which has thus been laid waste was one one of the finest Alpages or Alp grazing grounds in the. noun tains thereabout, and, although in the territory of Berne, was rented or ac- quired by the Commune of Leuk. Hence the presence on the Spitalmatte Alp of people from Leuk. The cattle, according to Alpine custom, were about to be taken down to Leuk In day or two, on the termination of their sum- mer grazing in the high Alps, and the unfortunate president of the Leuk l had come up to settle the grazing ac- counts for the owners of the various lots of cattle of which the wholedrove consisted-such owners of cattle pay ing so much per head of cattle for the summer grazngN-and the other men of the Valais had accompanied him on his mission. The loss of the cattle Is cal culated at four thousand pounds. Thirty poor families of Leuk are thus deprived of all their subsistence. It will be many years before the once rich l Alpage of Spitalmatte is restored to it's former state. and this loss which falls on the Commune of Leuk, is calculated at sixteen thousand pounds.
 The little inn, the Sehwarenbach Ho- tel, so well known to Alpine tourists. was just outside the field of disaster, but many Alpine chalets have been de- stroyed; a whole forest of fine aryen has been mown down like grass, and another forest of larches on the Zagen- grat also partly carried away; six per- sons perished and one hundred and if ty head of cattle The large tract cov- cred by this disastrous fall looks like a glacier in ruins, offering to the eye a confused, rugged mass of snow in blocks, rocks and stones, trees, and bodies of cattle piled up in some places in heaps forty or fifty feet deep. The one hundred and fifty head of cattle are supposed to have been lifted off their legs by the great current of air, dashed against the opposite side of the valley, and then brought back again by 1 the refiux. Only four of the bodies of the men who were killed have as yet 1 been found. The victims are all of the valais-Herr Rothen, the vice-presi- dent of the Commune of Leuk; Gaspar i Jaeger, a farmer, of Tourtemagne; 1 Techopp, d carpenter of Leuk. The bodies of the two herdsmen have not yet been found.
 As soon as the calamity was known, troops Of able-bodied men, with their municipal chiefs at their head and as- sisted by engineers, started from Leuk, Kandersteg and Frutigen to proceed to the rescue of the bodies. The Prefect of the District of Frutigen, eighty-two years of age, was one of the most zeal ous in the active search which was car ried on, amid the vast mass of glacier debris. The discovery of the bodies re- vealed, however, shocking spectacles; one head was entirely removed from its shoulders, and the bodies were man. gled with bones broken in many places, and destitute of clothing.
 It is said that party of Englishmen. with their guides, passed over the de- vastated tract twenty minutes before the disaster. Various travellers have passed since, but the tract is only pas- sable on foot, and a repetition of the disaster is not considered impossible. A similar misfortune happened in the same place in 1712, in precisely the l same way and just as the herdSmen