years have elapsed since I looked over the melancholy waste-and though I have become tolerably familiar with the operation of seas and floods in other regions in the interval, I must own that it was only in an Alpine valley that I ever witnessed the full power of moving water, and thence learned duly to respect it as an agent in the geological history of the earth's surface. A few words will serve to explain the cause of the debacle in question, and will serve as an introduction to what we ourselves saw.

The Val de Bagnes is a steep, narrow, rugged, valley, or more properly rocky glen, running for about thirty or forty miles in a direction nearly east and west among those mountains lying on the south side of the Valais, and forming a part of the great Alpine ridge which divides Switzerland from Piedmont. This ridge is elevated to that height which secures for it a coating of eternal snow, and consequently it sends down on all sides, wherever the slope and form of the ground are suitable, those well-known huge frozen masses called glaciers, composed, as I shall have occasion afterwards to describe more particularly, of pure snow at the top, but of ice and halfmelted snow at the bottom. Near a place called St. Branchier the Val de Bagnes takes a rectangular turn, and after passing in its new course for two or

three miles amongst the hills, opens into the great valley of the Rhone at Martigny. The river Dranse, which has its origin in the two glaciers of Chermontane and Mont Durand, lying at the very top of the glen, flows along the Val de Bagnes till at Martigny it meets the Rhone, of which it is one of the principal feeders. The banks of this river, or, to speak more properly, of this mountain torrent, are at most places precipitous. But the ground occasionally becoming less steep, admits of the formation of soil, and this even if it be too steep for the purposes of agriculture is richly clad with the larch, a tree which loves to root itself in such commanding positions. If, then, by any possibility, the industrious and hardy Switzer can either plough up, or delve into such a spot, he eagerly takes possession of it, and presently converts it into a garden, in the midst of which he builds up of dark red logs of larch one of those charming cottages, so well known all over the world for their picturesque beauty, and which, unlike so many other edifices, loses no portion of its interest on a closer inspection. Indeed I am sure every Alpine traveller will agree with me, that they are often a hundred times prettier in the reality, than in those tawdry paintings when the artist strives in vain to impart to his would-be Swiss cottages the inimitable graces-the boundless

To

and ever fresh variety of Alpine scenery. connect these eagle-nest patches together, bridges are thrown across the ravine; and to supply them with bread, mills are constructed as near the edge of the stream as the experience of ordinary floods has taught the inhabitants that they may venture to place their wheels. Thus, wherever it is possible, amongst the Alps, for the foot of man to plant itself, little villages start up, enriched by gardens, and decked by the church steeple, which never fails to meet the eye in a Swiss community, however small, or however poor, or, I may add, however exposed it may occasionally be to the ravages of such a debacle as swept out the poor valley of the Dranse in 1818.

Until the fatal moment of destruction arrives, or at all events, till the hour of danger approaches, mankind, all the world over, are pretty nearly equally indifferent, and go on, dancing and singing, marrying and giving in marriage, under the very ribs of death, with as much unconcern as if they were living in perfect safety! The inhabitants of Portici and Resina, for instance, living at the base of Vesuvius; or those of Catania, at the foot of Mount Etna, where torrent upon torrent of lava has flowed in endless succession,-never dream of an eruption till the parched volcano drinks up their wells, and, in the language of Scripture,

"fire runs along the ground! *" In like manner I have observed the gay voluptuaries of Lima scarcely disturbed in their reckless enjoyment of life by the shock of an earthquake, which interrupted only for a transient moment of fear, and impatient prayer, their darling "Tertullas," while the ceilings and walls of their houses cracked in their ears, and church steeples toppled round them! So with ourselves-the coasts of our own country, strewed every winter with wrecks, suggest no ideas of danger to the British seaman, or make him one whit less anxious to leave the wearisome

land for the merry sea. Precisely in the same spirit of confident and happy security an inhabitant of the Val de Bagnes prefers living amongst his cold and almost barren, but much-loved, mountains, in a situation of constant danger with which he has become familiar from his infancy, rather than dwell in perfect security in the rich adjacent plains of Lombardy.

Not far from the top of the Val de Bagnes the huge glacier of Getroz, descending between two mountains (Mont Pleureur and Mont Getroz), falls into the valley at a place where the channel of the Dranse is much contracted. For several years previous to the time I am speaking of (1818) the Dranse had been occasionally, but not seriously,

obstructed by blocks of ice and avalanches of snow from the slowly-advancing glacier above mentioned. These, in process of time, became so frequent and so extensive, that they began to resist the melting power of the summer; and eventually the glacier itself, having joined company with the enormous pile of fragments it had sent before it, pushed itself directly across the narrow valley, so as to rest its snout or base on the foot of the opposite mountain, called Mauvoisin, on the left bank of the Dranse, while its upper part lay several hundred feet above the bed of the stream, on the other side. For some time the torrent contrived, as is usual in such cases, to find its way under or through the crevices in this barrier: but at length, owing to fresh portions of mingled ice-rocks and snow being cast down from the sides of the glacier, the various channels or tunnels which the river had excavated, became choked up. As soon as this took place, the waters, having no outlet, of course began to form a lake, which in time swelled to half a league in length, and though only three or four hundred feet wide, measured more than a hundred feet deep.

This was the state of affairs in April 1818, and there would have been no harm in it had the barrier been of rocky materials, as frequently happens in the Alpine valleys; in that case as soon as the lake, by