Asing by the light of flaring gas. There in front of you is the dark, black arch; and there behind you is another; while under your feet the foul rushing water hurries along, sending up a smell as turns your silver watch, and every sixpence and shilling you have in your pocket, black as the water that swirls bubbling along. Every word you speak sounds hollow and echoing, while it goes whispering and rumbling along the dark arch till you think it has gone, when all at once you hear it again quite plain in a way as would make you jump as much as when half a brick or a bit o' hard mortar dropped into the water.

I crawled on, and on, and on, in the hopes that the place I was in would lead under one of the street-gratings, and I kept staring ahead in the Again the horror of thick darkness come upon hopes of catching a gleam of light, till at last the me: I shrieked out wildly, and the cry went echo-place seemed so tight that I dared go no farther, for ing through the sewer, sounding hollow and wild till fear of being fixed in. So I began to back very it faded away. But once more I got the better of slowly, and then, feeling it rather hard work, stopped it, and persuaded myself that I had only cried aloud for a rest. to scare the rats. What would I not have given for a stout stick as a defence against attack as I groped my way on, feeling convinced that I should be right if I crawled down stream, when a little reflection would have told me that up stream must be the right way, for I must have been borne down by the water. But I could not reflect, for my brain seemed in a state of fever, and now and then my teeth chattered as though I had the ague.

The hot blood seemed to gush into my eyes; I felt half suffocated; and, to add to my sufferings, a rat, that felt itself, as it were, penned up, fastened upon my lip. It was its last bite, however, for, half mad as I felt then, my teeth had closed in a moment upon the vicious beast, and it was dead.

I made one more struggle, but could not move, I was so knocked up; and then I fainted.

It must have been some time before I come to myself; but when I did, the first sound I heard was a regular tramp, tramp, of some one walking over my head, and I gave a long yell for help, when, to my great joy, the step halted, and I shrieked again, and the sweetest sound I have ever heard in my life came back. It was a voice shouting,— "Hallo!"

no living memory could parallel, and such as all the luxuriance of Alpine vegetation could not hide for years. Such diasters are overwhelming from their magnitude and universality. But the cause is at least obviously adequate to the effect, and the result foreseen as the inevitable consequence of a continuance of the downfall long before the waters rise to their full height. Local and partial inundations have often a peculiar intensity, not to say ferocity, of their own; and mischief such as in 1853 it took three days of bad weather to bring about, is sometimes the work of an hour. A remarkable outbreak of this kind occurred during the past summer, in the little valley of Sixt, which, it is believed, afforded an example of rapid destruction and of merely local activity rare even amongst similar phenomena, and may therefore deserve a passing notice. The village of Sixt is situated at the confluence

"Stuck fast in the drain!" I shouted with all the strength I had left; and then I swooned off once more, to wake up a week afterwards out of a brain-of two mountain torrents, the Bas Giffre and the fever sleep in a hospital. Haut Giffre. The Bas Giffre drains a valley six or It seems I had got within a few yards of a grating seven miles long, the upper part of which is well which was an end o' the drain, and the close quar-known to tourists as the Fond de la Combe, and reters made the rats so fierce. The policeman had heard my shriek, and had listened at the grating, and then got help; but he was only laughed at, for they could get no further answer out o' me. It was then about half past three on a summer's morning; | and though the grate was got open, they were about to give it up, saying the policeman had been humbugged; when a couple o' sweeps came up, and the little 'un offered to go down back'ards, and he did, and came out directly after, saying that he could feel a man's head with his toes.

In every Alpine valley, the tales of disaster wrought from time to time by the tempest or the avalanche are amongst the most firmly rooted matters of local tradition. The landslip, the snowfall, the whirlwind, the storm, have written their story in indelible records almost everywhere beneath the shadows of the higher mountains, sometimes in isolated fragments which tell of a purely local catastrophe, sometimes in the more ample chapters of a history which covers a national misfortune. Of elemental outbreaks of the more general character, the inundations of 1853 afforded a striking example. For three days in succession, wherever an Alp reared its head, or a snow-basin lay couched in a mountain-hollow, the rain fell with a steady and persevering energy which, to those who knew the country, had something in it more ominous than the bursting of the wildest tempest. Without pause or variation of intensity, without break or gap for hundreds of square miles, and rendered infinitely more potent by a temperature high without precedent under such circumstances, the waters streamed down from the skies over a thousand mountains and their intermediate depressions, and, with their volume swollen to an incredible extent by the debris of rock, glacier, and snowfield which they bore with them to the devoted valleys and lowlands, committed an amount of general ravage and destruction such as

|

6

ceives the outpourings of several small glaciers clustered about the base of the Pic de Tinneverges, the principal one being the glacier of Mont Ruan, where Jacques Balmat, the pioneer of Mont Blanc, met a tragical death. The valley of the Haut Giffre is of about the same extent, but leads to mountains more generally known, -the Buet, whence the traveller gazes on one of the noblest prospects to be found in the Western Alps, with the Col de Léchaud crossing its western shoulder, and westward still the rocky chain of Les Fys, terminating in the magnificent Pointe de Salles, and flanking the Col d'Anterne by a range of precipices which can scarcely be matched for abrupt and awful grandeur in Switzerland or Savoy. The valley penetrates into the very heart of the Buet, and is blocked at last by an amphitheatre of crag and precipice not unlike one of the well-known Cirques' of the Pyrenees, on a much larger scale. The rocks rise tier above tier and wall above wall, with only here and there a narrow band of shelving verdure between one set of precipices and the next, from the bed of the watercourse to the glaciers by which the Buet is crowned, some five thousand feet above. Near one extremity of the horseshoe, a beautiful slope of mingled grass and firwood is banked up against the terraced structure of the mountain, in the form of an irregular cone, and presents a delightful contrast of color with the ever-changing shades of gray and brown and black that flit athwart the sombre mass as the clouds chase one another across the blue sky, or as the varying rays of morning, midday, or sunset play into the amphitheatre, - sometimes concealing in a blaze of sunlight, sometimes exposing by the heavy shadows that attend them, the infinite intricacies of mountain architecture. At the base of this green buttress of the Buet, the valley forks again, the watercourse_on the right descending straight from the Col de Léchaud, and that on the left receiving the far more considerable drainage of the great mass of the Buet itself. Two or three hundred feet above the confluence of these two waters, a little plateau breaks the uniformity of the grass slope, and here is nestled a little collection of châlets called Les Fonds, in front of which, on the very edge of the plateau, an English gentleman has built his "Eagle's Nest," a beautiful mountain home, forming a conspicuous object from many parts of the path from Sixt to the Col d'Anterne. It was here that the tempest burst in its full violence.

The following particulars have been collected, | ing to the Eagle's Nest. Along its side the owner partly by conversation with a considerable number has enclosed his property by a very substantial of people in the neighborhood, and partly by per- wooden palisading, built with a strength and solidity sonal inspection. There was one source of infor- which prove that the difference between an Alpine mation which appeared to be the most comprehen- and an English climate has been felt and apprecisive. A young prêtre-aspirant, who had just donned ated. In some places this fence is strengthened by his official costume, and whose soutane of the new-heavy walls of rough stone several feet in thickness; est and glossiest black cloth shone in the sunlight as in others, the natural rock and soil have appeared it never will shine again till polished into supernat- to afford sufficient hold. Above the fence the ural brightness by the friction of many years, paid ground rises very sharply till the little plateau on a visit to the writer, accompanied by two or three which the house stands is reached. Higher up the of his seniors, and related many details. He was Ruisseau des Fonds, near to the place where the catwound up like a piece of mechanism, and you had aract was seen suddenly to emerge from the clouds, but to touch the spring and off the wheel-works a huge withered pine had been felled for firewood went. He was brought up every now and then by for the inmates of the Eagle's Nest. It was of enoran untimely interruption from one of his associates; mous growth, and the stem which remained, after but on these occasions he quietly bided his time, being topped and lopped and dressed, is said by a with more or less of patience, and then took up his very intelligent man, named Claude Gurlie, a sort parable again just where he had left off, until he was of major-domo at the Eagle's Nest, to have been fairly run down. But as his narrative began with eighty feet long. It lay on the bank of the Ruisan assurance that the atmosphere had a strong smell seau des Fonds, not longitudinally, parallel with of sulphur, and as the writer's look of surprise was the stream, - but with the thick end near the bed met by a ready explanation that "On prétendait of the watercourse and the top above the bank, qu'il y avait là-haut beaucoup de pierres souffreuses," leaning against the steep side of the ravine. The his anecdotes have been received with caution, and flood of water caught the butt end of the pine stem, used but scantily. and rolled the whole piece over till it fell into the Early in the afternoon of the 22d of September, torrent and was hurled down as if it were a playit was evident that a heavy storm was gathering. thing. At the same time a heap of logs ready cut As far down the valley as Samöens nearly eight for firewood, and stacked some twenty or thirty feet miles below the Châlets des Fonds- it was so dark above the bed of the stream, were reached by the at three o'clock that the agent-voyer, Monsieur Bar- water, and hurried away. The first obstacle the bier, who was at work in his office, was obliged to great pine-tree met was the palisading of the Ealight his lamp; and the upper parts of the Buet, of gle's Nest, at an angle in the stream; of course it the heights running from the Buet to the Col d'An- was swept away like so much gingerbread, and but terne, of the Chaine des Fys, and of the Pointe de for the stout wall at its base, the bank above must Salles, were shrouded in one dense mass of impen- also have been assailed, and it is difficult to say how etrable black cloud. To those who were in it, how-much might not have been swept off by so irresistever, it does not appear to have been so thoroughly opaque as many a lighter mass of vapor; for the people who were in the Eagle's Nest speak of having seen the Châlets des Fonds, though of course obscurely; and, as will presently appear, when the storm was at its height they were able to distinguish the lower crags of the Buet at a much more considerable distance.

The storm did not fairly burst till between four and five, and then while it lasted there was no lack of light either where it was actually raging or lower down the valley, for it is said that the lightning was to all appearance actually and absolutely continuous for half an hour together. The fall of water is described as having borne no resemblance to ordinary rain, but as having descended in sheets as if poured out of pails or tubs. Men who were at work mending the mule-path to the Col d'Anterne, at a height of between five thousand and six thousand feet above the level of the sea, say that it fell upon them in spouts, like great douches, four or five inches across, which pitted the ground wherever it was struck. Fortunately the Châlets of Grasses Chèvres were at hand, or they might have found themselves hardly dealt with by the elements.

ible a torrent, so charged with rocks and stones, and trees and timber. The Ruisseau des Fonds is perhaps the very smallest of the affluents of the Haut Giffre, but the marks along its sides showed that the water must have risen between twenty and thirty feet above its bed, and all observers concur in saying that the waters attained their full height in a few minutes.

Where the Ruisseau des Fonds joins the Haut Giffre that stream flows, or rather falls, by a set of rapids and cascades through a gorge of the wildest and most romantic description. Massive crags, of great height and perpendicularity, hem it in on either side, and almost meet in places. In one spot they are spanned by an old tree, which has fallen across, and almost forms a bridge, a hundred and twenty or thirty feet above the water. In ordinary times it is a stream that you leap across, if you cannot walk over it dryshod, but on the present occasion the water rose to within about fifty feet of the top of the gorge, so that the stream at this point must have been seventy feet in depth. Higher up, the ravine is shallower on one side, and the depth of the actual cut through which the river flows not above thirty or forty feet. The set of the stream, over a beautiful A very few minutes after this deluge of water be- fall a little way above, is against this side; and ten gan to fall, two women who were at the Eagle's days later the alder-bushes and young firs which Nest observed a black cataract burst, as it were, out cover the steep slopes above it were so full of mud, of the clouds, and come falling down a gully on the left by the swollen flood, that the writer was half side of the Buet where it approaches nearest to the smothered with dust in pushing his way through Chalets des Fonds. From this gully a watercourse, them, certainly a hundred feet above the then called the Ruisseau des Fonds, often dry in sum-level of the water. Lower down, and below the mer, leads down to that arm of the Haut Giffre narrowest part of the gorge, is a fir-tree, growing which descends from the Col de Léchaud, and in its just on the edge of a shelving bank ending in a lower part forms the boundary of the ground belong-drop of about thirty feet into the river. This fir

tree is so bruised and battered and barked, to a height of about six feet above the ground, by the trees and débris hurled past it, that it is doubtful if it can ever recover.

-

twelve to twenty feet in width, and about one hundred and fifty in depth, a dark, sunless chasm, at the bottom of which the stream glides on out of sight, and in ordinary times out of hearing. This But if this was the condition of the smaller arm gorge of Les Tines saved the people of the rich of the Haut Giffre, what was the volume pouring plains below from infinite mischief, for it is so nardown the other arm, which receives the real drain- row that it speedily arrested the great trunks of age of the Buet? It is not easy to give a notion trees and blocks of wood which the torrent brought by description of what it must have been. But down. Ten days after the storm a heap of logs and there was a bridge by which the path to the Châlets timber fifty or sixty feet high was still collected des Fonds and the Col d'Anterne crossed the river, against the entrance of Les Tines. It dammed back just above the junction of the two confluents. Its the water, ponded it on to the little plain above, highest point was about fifteen feet above the and let it out to the plains below far more gradually stream, which is not confined to a very narrow than it otherwise would have come. But a little gorge like the smaller arm, but has abundant room flat just below Les Tines, stretching on both sides to spread. This bridge was carried away, and the of the stream, and one of the most fertile spots in water-line was unmistakably traceable along the this fertile valley, was nevertheless buried, like its rock and in the shrubs and grass about twelve feet neighbor above, three or four feet in grit and sand still higher. Not a hundred yards higher up, where and débris. Houses that stood near the water-side the sides of the watercourse are a little more con- were nearly half filled with mud, and humble homes tracted, the marks of the flood where not less than made desolate for many a day to come. fifty feet above the bed of the stream. In this place the flood must have been fifty feet deep and at least a hundred wide. People who saw and heard the waters about two miles below, where the bed of the Giffre is still contracted, and before it had met with anything like a plain to overspread, say, that when standing five hundred feet above it, they felt the ground tremble beneath their feet as if they had been close to a railway train at its full speed.

Before reaching the point of junction with the Bas Giffre, which is a few minutes' walk below the village of Sixt, the river passes by a small but very fertile plain or delta of alluvial soil; and a village named Fée is planted close to the water-side. There is a blacksmith's forge, worked by the stream, and several houses are also close along its banks. The rush of the water upon these devoted buildings is described as having been awful in the extreme. The blacksmith, Michetti, a provident and industrious man, who has been utterly ruined by the calamity, described to the writer how there was a cry that the water was coming, - how he rushed to the door, which happened to face up stream, and saw a black wall of mud higher than himself sweeping down upon him with the velocity of an avalanche, and how he was splashed by the spray of the advancing torrent, as he hurried up the bank above him. Two seconds later, escape would have been impossible, and he must have perished with all that belonged to him. In another moment the wheels and hammers were smashed to pieces, or far on their way towards Samöens, and an hour after his workshop was one mass of mud, which had to be dug out as the ashes are dug out of Pompeii. The neighboring houses, of course, fared no better, and their inmates were happy to have saved their

lives.

Sweeping past the hamlet of Fée, the torrent spread itself over the low-lying fields, and soon covered a great extent of land; but it appeared not yet to have spent the velocity of its current sufficiently to deposit the vast stores of mud and grit with which it was charged. It ploughed a deep channel through the soft soil for nearly half a mile, and even this was fairly silted up only at its lower extremity. The full measure of its destructive power was reserved for two smaller plains just below the junction with the Bas Giffre, separated from one another by a most remarkable gorge called Les Tines, where the Giffre flows through a narrow ravine cut in the course of ages through the solid rock, varying from

All this ruin was the work of half an hour. The violence of the storm had spent itself in that time, and what rain fell afterwards would not have been exceptional among the Alps. In that short time every bridge, large and small, between the Col de Léchaud and the gorge of Les Tines was swept away, and an amount of damage done, not great according to English notions, but disastrous in the extreme to the poor peasants who suffered from it. Skilled persons, directed by the government to investigate the mischief done, assessed it at little short of one hundred thousand francs. That it was not far greater was owing partly to the peculiar nature of the course of the Giffre, which flows for a great distance between high and steep banks where it cannot do any great harm, and partly to the remarkably circumscribed area of the storm. It was confined in its violence almost to the Buet itself. The Bas Giffre was scarcely swollen, a little plank bridge not four feet above the water, and within two hundred yards of its junction with the Haut Giffre, was not disturbed. The region of the Col d'Anterne felt only the outskirts of the storm. The "Graignier de la Commune de Sixt," a mountain which furnishes some of its watercourses with a provision of huge stones and boulders so extensive and destructive that they are always called "des plus méchants,” was hardly touched by the tempest; and so the stream, swollen as it was, lacked the ruinous power given to such torrents by the presence in their waters of the boulders with which they are often charged. The neighboring valleys on the other side of the Buet and the Col d'Anterne were visited by no unusual downfall.

Most readers probably know the kind of exaggeration that a Swiss or Savoyard peasant indulges in when any misfortune that affects himself or his neighbors is in question. The good people of Sixt are certainly no exceptions to the general rule in this respect. Amongst the happy results of French rule, an increased sense of self-reliance is certainly not to be counted. The wildest rumors were afloat as to the extent of the disaster. "Tout est perdu!” resounded on all sides, and Samöens was filled in an incredibly short time with a clamorous crowd, besieging the authorities and people of influence to procure for them the assistance of government. Amongst the first rumors that were extensively circulated was that of the complete destruction of the Eagle's Nest. Gurlie, mentioned above as the major-domo of the establishment, was at Sixt when