Avalanches in the Alps.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 21, 25 May 1907, Page 21

Avalanches in the Alps.

The avalanche “ season ” lias begun, and from all parts of Switzerland come tales of death and destruction, writes the Geneva correspondent of a London paper. Few tourists who visit the Alps in the summer, when all Nature smiles, can realise the dread ami devastation caused by winter avalanches. The balmy air and sunny days of spring bring not joy, but fear, to the hearts of the uvvellers on the mountains. For, as the heat increases, overhanging and roughly balanced masses of snow, ice, serac, and glacier, which have collected on the mountain slopes and summits during the long winter months, fail to maintain their cohesion with the main bulk, and plunge madly down into the lower pastures and valleys, sweeping away whole forests, houses, and villages, their inmates and cattle alike, and burying them in one awful grave. Villagers ami villages unite to fight the avalanche, insurance companies pro vide against its work of destruction, and even the Swiss Government grants a yearly subsidy to enable a stall of engineers to plant forests and construct trendies and breastworks in the threat) nod dis tricts. All the efforts of man when battling against this scot.rgc of Nature are, however, pitifully poor and ineffectual. Forests of stout pines and oaks, huge boulders, and solid walls and houses have been wiped out in a few seconds, and replaced by an ugly gash in the mountain side. By the nature of their precipitous mountain slopes the Cantons of Valais and Grisons and portions of the Bernese Oberland are peculiarly open to the sweeping onrush of snow masses.

For thirty year*? snow to ath-b a depth —in some places rising to six yard- has not falkm in the Alps, nor hate there ever been so many avalanches. Avalanch**** have «* eurioiw kitu-k of falling un the -a me giound, about the same time, year by year, and an . rdinary well-behaved one is uonient to roll its* mighty masses down into the bed of a valley or ravine, there to stay until the sun has effaced ita re fv.;luus irom the landscape. These “ white rivers,” as they m- . ailed by the Swiss peasants, caus» neither anxiety nor fear to the Alpine villagers, who. on the contrary, often start the avalanche by shouting ami shooting at it, for, when the time is ripe, the vibration of the air in its vicinitv is sufficent to start the mass of snow on its downward career. On the other hand, there ar«- moics of little handers and villages situated in the Alps whose inhabitants have the fear of death long ng over them for months during the spi ingtimv. It is i pathetic sight to witness these poor peasant- wending their way o the little village • ’Lurch, several days each week, to pray i"r deliverance from this scourge of the mountain. Income tpuioL*' in 1 sun it ions Alpine hamlets also it is the custom for all the inhabitants to gather on a certain day. climb the heights, and approach as near as possible the “white river” at whose mercy are their lives and property. Then they pray and beg the mountain not to injure or destroy them. Recently in the Vai Vedas<-a. which is situated between precipitous mountaiu ranges on the Swiss Italian frontier, to the east of Maggiore, avalanches fell so frequently and committed so much havoc in the villages that 5000 peasants left their homes m a body, ami hitherto prosperous gardens, orchards, farin>, ami lie Ids are now deserted and abandoned to their fate. There is another descited village at the. foot of the Silv,etta Pass, in the Canton of Grissoms where, aceunLng to |o<-al tradition. “ the grass will never again clothe the hillside nor rattle browse •' because of the snows whi< h were once hßed on the devoted village and converted it into a cemetery. The Fluvia Pass, in the same <*ank>n, is a notoriously dangerous thoroughfare —if one may employ such a word here. Some winters ago the Davos diligence, which crosses the Flucla, n< vc: n ached its destination, and all endeavours ie iiud the missing men uik! maids killed, so immense was the avalam hr which rested on the road. Four months later, on a smiling summer day. the bodies of the six postal employees. tlivjr horses, ami their mails were found, as fresh and as sound as when, a hundred ami twenty days before, the mountains let loose their snov \ wind-ing-shcid. In the spring of 1905 eighty miners employed in thn Grandes Mine-, jive houn? journey from Pragelato, a little town in tho Italian Alps, were returning home along an Alpine path, when they were all swept t»00 yards down i h<* side of the Col \lbcrgi.i and buried by an avalanvliP. Italian troops and police made heroic efforts to rescue the entombed men, but to-day only two out of eighty live to tell the tale. Sometimes it happens that an avalanche blocks up a stream, whose waters form a lake behind the dam of snow and debris, and menace the existence of an entire valley. Such a catastrophe happened last, year above the populous villages of Grugnay and Chamoson. in the Canton of Valars With no warning, save a deafening roar like the boom of a. hundred si<‘ge guns, twelve million cubic yards of packed snow shot into the narrow valley, leaving the whole south lave »>£ the mountain as bare and black as in the height of <ummcr. The enormous pressure of the «\erdeep<miug stream began to push ! rward the solid waterfall of snow and ice towards the twn villages, which had been hastily varab-4 by order of the Swiss nutlmritivs. I'or two months the fate of the village hung in the balam , but Federal erginorrs, aided by largr gangs of workmen, eventually succeeded in turn ing the stream into a newly made channel ami burring Ihr progress of the monster avalanche by solid brick wallWith >iio\\ unusually deep on the Alps ihis -priug, iuuuh anxiety’ reign- among the Hiountain dwellers. Ou the li.iliaii side of Xlohl IMac. Matterhorn, and Monte Ku<a emu imam u\al.«rs h< - luivg lately plunged down th< -p mL p-fill-ing up huge un ».!*<-<•“ ami !■ »•” -< raeS un the wav