‘That great part of this prodigious mass was absorbed in some gulf below is plain also from the inclining ground at the bottom of the hill, which is free and unencumbered, but would have been buried in heaps of rubbish, had the fragment parted and fallen forward. About a hundred yards from the foot of this hanging coppice stood a cottage by the side of a lane; and two hundred yards lower, on the other side of the lane, was a farmhouse, in which lived a labourer and his family; and just by, a stout new barn. The cottage was inhabited by an old woman, her son, and his wife. These people, in the evening, which was very dark and tempestuous, observed that the brick floors of their kitchens began to heave and part, and that the walls seemed to open and the roofs to crack; but they all agree that no tremor of the ground indicating an earthquake was ever felt, only that the wind continued to make a tremendous roaring in the woods and hangers. The miserable inhabitants, not daring to go to bed, remained in the utmost solicitude and confusion, expecting every moment to be buried under the ruins of their shattered edifices. When daylight came, they were at leisure to contemplate the devastations of the night. They then found that a deep rift, or chasm, had opened under their houses, and torn them as it were in two, and that one end of the barn had suffered in a similar manner; that a pond near the cottage had undergone a strange reverse, becoming deep at the shallow end, and so vice versâ; that many large oaks were removed out of their perpendicular, some thrown down, and some fallen into the heads of neighbouring trees; and that a gate was thrust forward with its hedge full six feet, so as to require a new track to be made to it. From the foot of the cliff, the general course of the ground, which is pasture, inclines in a moderate descent for half a mile, and is interspersed with some hillocks, which were lifted in every direction, as well towards the great woody hanger as from it. In the first pasture the deep clefts began, and running across the lane and under the buildings, made such vast shelves that the road was impassable for some time; and so over to an arable field on the other side, which was strangely torn and disordered. The second pasture-field, being more soft and springy, was protruded forward without many fissures in the turf, which was raised in long ridges resembling graves, lying at right angles to the motion. At the bottom of this inclosure, the soil and turf rose many feet against the bodies of some oaks that obstructed their further course, and terminated this awful commotion.’
Passing by a number of catastrophes of this nature occurring at earlier dates, we propose to give some interesting particulars concerning one which took place in the early part of this century in Switzerland, where they are very frequent.
In one corner of the canton of Schweitz are the lakes Wallenstadt, Zug, and Lowertz. Near the last is a mountain called the Righi, and a smaller one, the Rossberg. The latter is composed of strata of freestone, pudding-stone—a conglomeration of coarse sandstone, with silicious pebbles, flints, &c.; and clay, with frequent blocks of granite, in the lower part. On the 2d of September 1806, a large portion of this mountain—a mass about a thousand feet in width, a hundred feet in depth, and nearly three miles in length—slipped into the valley below. It was not merely the summit or a projecting crag which fell, but an entire bed of strata extending from the top to nearly the bottom. A long continuance of heavy rains had softened the strata of clay, which sloped downwards; and so the mass was set free, and slipped into the valley, a chaos of stones, earth, clay, and clayey mud. For hours before the catastrophe there had been signs of some convulsion approaching. Early in the morning and at intervals during the day there were noises as if the mountain were in the throes of some great pang, so that it seemed to tremble with fear; so much so, that the furniture shook in the houses of the villages of Arth and St Ann. About two o’clock, a superstitious farmer, who dwelt high up the mountain, hearing a strange kind of cracking noise, and thinking it was the work of some demon, ran down to Arth to fetch the priest to exorcise the evil spirit. There were now openings in the turf, and stones were ejected in a few instances. In the hamlet of Unter Rothen, at the foot of the mountain, a man was digging in his garden, when he found his spade thrust back out of the soil, and the earth spurted up like water from a fountain. As the day advanced, the cracks in the ground became larger, portions of rock fell; springs began to flow, and frightened birds took wing in confusion, uttering discordant screams.
About five o’clock, the vast mass of material set loose began to move. At first the movement was slow, and there were repeated pauses. An old man sitting at his door smoking his pipe, was told by a neighbour that the mountain was falling. He thought there was plenty of time, and went indoors to fill his pipe again; but his neighbour ran down the valley, falling repeatedly by reason of the agitation of the ground, and escaped with difficulty. When he looked back to the village, the old man’s house had disappeared. In the space of about three minutes, the vast mass, separated into two portions, had descended three miles, sweeping everything before it. The smaller portion took a course towards the foot of the Righi, destroying the hamlets of Spitzbuhl, Ober and Unter Rothen. Its velocity was such as to carry enormous fragments to a great height up the opposite mountain. A peasant who survived the calamity, was engaged in cutting down a tree near his house, when a noise like thunder arrested his attention; he felt the ground tremble under his feet, and he was immediately thrown down by a current of air. Retaining his presence of mind, a dreadful scene presented itself; the tree he had been cutting down, his house, and every familiar object, had disappeared, and an immense cloud of dust enveloped him.
The ruin effected by the descent of the larger portion was more terrible. It took the direction of the Lake of Lowertz. Among its first victims were nine persons belonging to a party which had come from Berne to climb to the top of the Righi. Besides the village of Goldau, the adjacent villages of Bussingen and Hussloch, and three-fourths of the village of Lowertz, were overwhelmed. But the destruction did not stop here. The larger of the two portions filled up nearly one-fourth of the Lake of Lowertz. The body of water thus displaced formed a wave which swept over the little island of Schwanau in the lake, rising to the height of seventy feet, besides doing a great deal of mischief along the shore, especially to the village of Seewen.
By this disaster nearly five hundred persons lost their lives, and damage was done to the amount of one hundred and twenty thousand pounds. Of all the inhabitants, about twenty were taken alive from the ruins. Two out of a family of seven were saved as by a miracle. At the moment of the catastrophe the father was standing at his own door with his wife and three children. Seeing the mass rolling towards him, he caught up two of the children, bidding his wife follow him with the third. Instead of doing so, however, she turned back into the house to fetch the remaining child, Marianne, and Frances Ulrich, the servant-maid. Frances seized the little girl by the hand, and was leading her out, when the house, which was of timber, seemed to be torn from its foundations, and to turn over and over like a ball, so that she was sometimes on her head and sometimes on her feet. A storm of dust made the day dark as night. The violence of the shock separated her from the child, and she hung head downwards. She was squeezed and bruised a good deal, and her face was much cut and very painful. After some time she released her right hand, and wiped the blood from her face. She then heard Marianne groaning, and calling ‘Frances, Frances!’ The child said that she was lying on her back among stones and bushes, unable to rise; that her hands were at liberty, and that she could see the daylight and the green fields. Frances had imagined that they were buried a great depth under ground; and thought that the last day was come.
After remaining in this state some hours, Frances heard a bell, which she knew to be that of the village church of Steinen, calling the survivors to prayer. The little girl was now crying bitterly from pain and hunger; and the servant-maid tried in vain to comfort her. From sheer exhaustion, however, the cry became weaker, and then ceased entirely. Meanwhile, Frances herself was in a most painful position, hanging with her head downwards, enveloped in the liquid clay, and cold almost beyond endurance. By persevering in her efforts, she at length got her legs free, and so obtained partial relief. A silence of some hours followed. When the dark hours of that terrible night had passed and morning came, she had the satisfaction of knowing that the child was not dead, but had fallen asleep. As soon as she awoke, she began to cry and complain. The church bell now went again for prayers; and Frances heard also the voice of her master making lamentations over his loss. He had succeeded in escaping and rescuing the two children he had with him, though one was for a time partly buried in the fringe of the landslip. Seeking for the other members of his family, he had found the lifeless body of his wife with the child she had taken in her arms, at a distance of more than a quarter of a mile from where his house had stood. All of her that was visible was one of her feet. While digging out her body, he heard the cries of little Marianne. The child was at once disinterred from her living grave; and though one of her legs was broken, she seemed more anxious for the release of Frances than for her own comfort. The maid was soon extricated; but she was bruised and wounded in a frightful manner. For a long time her recovery was very doubtful. Even after she was out of danger, she was unable to bear the light, and was for a lengthened period subject to convulsions and seasons of extreme fear and terror.
A traveller who visited the district about a week after the catastrophe has given an interesting description of his visit: ‘Picture to yourself a rude and mingled mass of earth and stone, bristling with the shattered remains of wooden cottages, and with thousands of heavy trees torn up by their roots and projecting in all directions. In one part you might see a range of peasants’ huts, which the torrent of earth had reached with just force enough to overthrow and break in pieces, but without bringing soil enough to cover them. In another were mills broken in pieces by huge rocks, separated from the top of the mountain, which were even carried high up the Righi on the opposite side. Large pools of water were formed in different places; and many little streams, whose usual channels had been filled up, were bursting out in various places.’