The daily morning journal and courier. [volume] (New Haven, Conn.) 1894-1907, 1901-05-13

them" the narrative runs, had go
about two hundred yards ahead. TIL,
other four saw them entering the vii
lage Of Goldau, and one Of the latter
| pointing out to the rest the summit o.
the Rossberg (full four miles off in 4
straight line), where some strange com.
motion seemed taking place, which they
themselves were observing with tele-
scope; when, all at once, flight Of
stones, like cannon-balls, traversed the
air above their heads cloudy, thick
dust obscured their valley; frightfu
noise was heard. They fled. AS soon
as the obscurity was so far dissipated
as to make objects discernible, they
| sought their friends, but the village OF
| Goldau had disappeared under a heap
of stones one hundred feet i'm height
and the whole valley presented nothing
but perfect chaos.
"Of the unfortunate survivors one lost
a wife to whom he was just married,
one a son, third the two pupils under
his care; all researches to discover their
remains WERE and have ever since been,
fruitless. Nothing Is left of Goldau but
the bell which hung in it's steeple, and
which was found about a mile off. !"
Trees were knocked over as If by can
non balls. Rocks We're thrown across
the valley high up the Righi, and por-
ton Of the mountain fell into the little
Loke of Lowertz, where it raised wave
seventy feet high. which washed away
numbers Of houses, and left live fish
stranded in the village streets. A
similar mountain fall that occurred
within more fecesnt memory Is that of
the Plattenbergkofp, in Glarus, in 1881.
Here the disaster was due to q slate
quarry by which the mountain was
undermined. The danger was foreseen
some time before 1t happened; but some
incompetent persons, representing
themselves as experts, inspected the
mountain and declared that the danger
was not immediate. Consequently no
precautions were taken, and no one got
out fthe way. Shortly after five
o'clock on the day following their reas-
surfing statement, the mountain came
down and buried the village of Elm.
Ten million cubic meters of rock fell
down depth, on an average, Of about
four hundred and fifty meters, and shot
across the valley and up on the oppo-
site slope to a height Of one hundred
metres. Then it spread itself out, and
covered space of nine hundred thou
sand square metres to a depth of from
ten to twenty metres. The killed num-
bered one bundled and fifteen.
Even though landslides, terrible
though they have been, seem insignifi-
cant beside those we hear of from the
Himalayas. 1t is not only that these
are SO much higher than che
Alps. The far heavier rainfall also
causes them to fall more easily. Con-
whole tea plantations situa-
ted on the bill sides are not infrequent-
ly carried bodily into the valleys and
mountains as big as Mount Blanc have
been known to collapse and choke the
narrow river gorges. Weird and start
ling stories of this sort of thing are to
be found buried in the reports of the
Survey of India, the most
story being that of the
Maithana Hill eleven thousand feet
ligh), which only a few years ago
pitched bodily rather than slid into a
valley down which flowed one of the !
of the Ganges. The falling