instant, as Francisca afterwards said, "the house appeared to be torn from its foundation (it was of wood), and spun round and round like a tetotum; I was sometimes on my head, sometimes on my feet, in total darkness, and violently separated from the child." When the motion stopped she found herself jammed in on all sides, with her head downwards, much bruised, and in extreme pain. She supposed she was buried alive at a great depth; with much difficulty she disengaged her right hand and wiped the blood from her eyes.

Presently she heard the faint moans of Marianne, and called to her by name; the child answered that she was on her back among stones and bushes, which held her fast,

but that her hands were free, and that she saw the light, and even something green; she asked whether people would not soon come to take them out. Francisca answered that it was the day of judgment, and that no one was left to help them, but that they would be released by death, and be happy in heaven; they then prayed together. At lust Francisca's ears were struck by the sound of a bell, which she knew to be that of Stenenberg; then seven o'clock struck in another village, and she began to hope there were still living beings, and endeavoured to comfort the child; the poor little girl was at first clamorous for her supper, but her cries soon became fainter, and at last quite died away. Francisca, with her head still downwards, and surrounded by damp earth,

experienced a sense of cold in her feet almost insupportable; after prodigious efforts, she succeeded in disengaging her legs, and thinks this saved her life.

Many hours had passed in this situation, when she again heard the voice of Marianne, who had been asleep, and now renewed her lamentations. In the meantime, the unfortunate father, who, with much difficulty, had saved himself and two children, wandered about till daylight, when he came among the ruins to look for the rest of his family he soon discovered his wife, by a foot which appeared above ground; she was dead, with a child in her arms. His cries and the noise he made digging were heard by Marianne, who called out. She was extricated with a broken thigh, and saying tha Francisca was not far off, a further search led to her release also, but in such a state that her life was despaired of; she was blind for some days, and remained subject to convulsive fits of terror. It appeared, on subsequent examination, that the house, or themselves at least, had been carried down about 1,500 feet.

In another place a child two years old was found unhurt, lying on its straw mattress upon the mud, without any vestige of the house from which it had been separated. Such a mass of earth and stones rushed at once into the lake of Lowertz, although five miles distant, that one end of it was filled up, and a prodigious wave passed completely over the island of Schwanan, seventy feet above the usual level of the water, overwhelmed the opposite shore, and, as it returned, swept away into the lake many houses with their inhabitants. The chapel of Olten, built of wood, was found half a league from the place it had previously occupied, and many large blocks of stone completely changed their position.

CHAPTER XXV.

ASCENTS OF THE RIGHI-THE LAKE AND TOWN OF ZUG-THE CANTON OF SCHWITZ.

THE Righi, or Rigi, is a mountain, or rather a group of mountains, rising between the lakes of Lucerne and Zug. It is composed, like the fallen rocks of the Rossberg, of rounded fragments of all kinds and ages, granitic and calcareous, slate and basalt, crystals and organic remains. All the mountains, indeed, extending from the south end of the lake of Constance to the east end of the lake of Geneva, are composed of such rounded fragments, agglomerated by a common cement, and so hard that they break rather than come loose. The form of these fragments suggested the name of nagelflue, nail-head, while the agglomerated mass bears also the no less descriptive appellation of puddingstone. This formation is not found here in irregular heaps, but in distinct strata of various thickness, parallel to each other, and generally separated by thin earthy strata ; they all dip more or less to the south-east, presenting to the north-west their transverse

sections.

The most considerable of the villages, overwhelmed in the vale of Arth, was Goldau, and with it is connected a melancholy circumstance which must now be told. A party of eleven travellers from Berne, belonging to the most distinguished families, arrived at Arth, and set off on foot for the Righi a few minutes before the catastrophe. Seven of them had gone about 200 yards ahead, the other four saw them entering the village of Goldau, and one of the latter pointed out to the rest the summit of the Rossberg-full four miles off in a straight line-where some strange commotion seemed to be taking place. The others were, at the same time, observing it with a telescope, and had entered into conversation on the subject with some strangers who had just come up; when, all at once, a flight of stones, like cannon balls, traversed the air above their heads, a cloud of dust obscured the valley, a frightful noise was heard, and they fled. As soon as the obscurity was so far dissipated as to render objects discernible, they sought their friends, but the village of Goldau had disappeared under a heap of stones and rubbish 100 feet in height, while the whole valley was a perfect chaos. Of the unhappy survivors, ene lost a wife to whom he was just married, one a son, a third the two pupils under his care; and all researches to discover their remains proved fruitless.

Dr. Cheever has given the utmost force to his highly graphic pen, when describing his ascent of the Righi, and we shall avail ourselves of some of his statements, which are fully sustained by those of a friend of the writer, who has still more recently followed in his steps.

"It was the 6th of September, and the most perfectly beautiful morning that can be imagined. At a quarter past three the stars were reigning supreme in the heavens, with just enough of the old moon left to make a trail of light in the shape of a little silver boat among them. But speedily the horizon began to redden over the castern range of mountains, and then the dawn stole on in such a succession of deepening tints, that nothing but the

hues of the preceding sunset could be more beautiful. But there is this great difference between the sunrise and sunset, that the hues of sunset are every moment deepening as you look upon them, until again they fade into the darkness, while those of the sunrise gradually fade into the light of day. It is difficult to say which process is most beautiful; for if you could make everything stand still around you, if you could stereotype or stay the process for an hour, you could not tell whether it were the morning dawn or the evening twilight.

"A few long, thin stripes of fleecy cloud lay motionless above the castern horizon, like layers of silver lace, dipped first in crimson, then in gold, then in pink, then lined with an ermine of light, just as if the moon had been lengthened in soft furrows along the sky. This scene in the east attracts every eye at first, but it is not here that the glory of the view is to be looked for. This glory is in that part of the horizon on which the sun first falls, as he struggles up behind the mountains to flood the world with light. And the reason why it is so glorious is because, long before you call it sunrise in the cast, ho lights up in the west a range of colossal pyres, that look like blazing cressets kindled from the sky and fed with naphtha.

"The object most conspicuous as the dawn broke, and indeed the most sublimely beautiful, was the vast enormous range of the snowy mountains of the Oberland, without spot or vail of cloud or mist to dim them, the Finsteraarhorn at the left, and the Jungfrau and Silberhorn at the right, peak after peak and mass after mass, glittering with a cold wintry whiteness in the gray dawn. Almost the exact half of the circumference of the horizon commanded before and behind in our view, was filled with these peaks and masses of snow and ice, then, lower down, the mountains of bare rock, and lower still the earth with mounts of verdure; and this section of the horizontal circumference, which is filled with the vast ranges of the Oberland Alps, being almost due west from the sun's first appearance, it is on their tops that the rising rays first

strike.

"This was the scene for which we watched, and it seems as if nothing in nature can over again be so beautiful. It was as if an angel had flown round the horizon of mountain ranges, and lighted up each of their white pyramidal points in succession, like a row of gigantic lamps burning with rosy fires. Just so the sun suddenly tipped the highest points and lines of the snowy outline, and then, descending lower on the body of the mountains, it was as if an invisible omnipotent hand had taken them, and dipped the whole range in a glowing pink; the line between the cold snow untouched by the sunlight, and the warm roscate hue above, remaining perfectly distinct. This effect continued some minutes, becoming, up to a certain point, more and more beautiful.

"We were like children in a dark room, watching for the lighting up of some great transparency. Or, to use that image with which the poet Danté endeavoured to describe the expectant gaze of Beatrice in Paradise, awaiting the splendours to be revealed, we might say, connecting some passages, and adapting the imagery,

'E'en as the bird who midst the leafy bower
Has in her nest sat darkling through the night,
With her sweet brood; impatient to desery
Their wished looks, and to bring home their food
In the fond quest unconscious of her toil:
She of the time prevenient, on the spray
That overhangs their couch, with wakeful gaze
Expects the sun; nor ever till the dawn
Removeth from the cast her eager ken.
Wistfully thus we looked to see the heavens
Wax more and more resplendent, till on carth
Her mountain peaks burned as with rosy flame.

Twixt gladness and amaze

In sooth no wili had we to utter ought,
Or hear. And as a pilgrim, when he rests
Within the temple of his vow, looks round,
In breathless awe, and hopes some time to tell
Of all its goodly state; even so our eyes
Coursed up and down along the living light,
Now low, and now aloft, and now around
Visiting every step. Each mount did seem
Colossal ruby, whercon so inwrought

The sunbeam glowed, yet soft, it flamed intense

In cestasy of glory.'

"In truth, no word was uttered when that scene became visible. Each person gazed in

silence, or spake as in a whisper. It was as if we witnessed some supernatural revelation, where mighty spirits were the actors between earth and heaven;

With such ravishing light

And mantling crimson, in transparent air,
The splendours shot before us.'

And yet a devout soul might have almost felt, seeing those fires kindled as on the altars of God made visible, as if it heard the voices of seraphim crying, Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord of Iosts, the whole earth is full of his glory! For indeed, the vision was so radiant, so full of sudden, vast, and unimaginable beauty and splendour, that methinks a phalanx of the sons of God, who might have been passing at that moment, could not have helped stopping and shouting for joy as on the morning of creation.