THE FALL OF A MOUNTAIN IN SAVOY.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume V, Issue 237, 16 November 1877, Page 7

THE FALL OF A MOUNTAIN IN SAVOY.

An interesting account of the recent falling of a mountain in Torentaise, Savoy, causing disaster to two nourishing villages, has been communicated to the Courrier de.<t Aljtcs by M. Beraid. The phenomenon has been incorrectly reported as instantaneous, and the destructive effect complete, whereas the case is that of a mountain which for twenty days, without cessation, has been dismembering itself and literally falling, night and day, into the valley below, filling it with piled up blocks of stone, extinguishing all sounds by its incessant thunder, and covering the distant horizon with a thick cloud of yellowish dust. The entire mass comprised in the slope forms a mutilated cone 200 metres broad at the top, and 600 at the base (the slope being about fifty degrees) ; this is composed of hard schist lying close together, but no longer united ; and it is united to the body of tho mountain only by a vertical mass of 40 or 50 metres thick, which already is fissured and shaken. Periods of repose occur lasting only a few seconds, or a minute at most ; then the movement recommences, and continues about 50 hours. Blocks of 40 cubic metres become displaced with no apparent cause, traverse the 1,800 metres of descent in the thirty seconds, leaping 400 to 500 metres at a time, and finally get dashed to pieces in the bed of the torrent, or launch their shattered fragments into the opposite forest, mowing down gigantic pines as if they were so many thistles. One such block was seen to strike a fine fir-tree before reaching the biidge between the villages ; the tree was not simply broken or overthrown, but was crushed to dust (volatilise) ; trunk and branches disappeared in the air like a burning match. Rocks arc hurled together and broken into fragments that are thrown across the valley like swallows in a whirlwind ; then follow sliowers of smaller fragments, and one hears the whistling sound of thousands of pebbles as they pass. M. Berard reached the edge of the rock (2,4(i0 metres high), on one of the sides of the falling cone, and ventured along it, obtaining a good view of the "terrifying" spectacle. He re-affirms his conviction that the phenomenon is inexplicable by any of the usual reasons that account for Alpine disturbances, such as penetration of water or melting of snows or inferior strata in motion ; nor does the declivity of the slope explain it. His hypothesis is that some geological force is at work, of which the complex resultant acts obliquely to the axis of the mountain and almost parallel to its side?, — Nature,