THE AVALANCHE.

Switzerland is a land of wonders. Its lofty mountains, some of them capped with everlasting snow, rise over deep tranquil valleys, intersected by rushing streams and often presenting the most charming lakes. Mount Blanc, the loftiest peak, is a sort of Goliah among mountains- the best known and the most formidable of all. Lake Leman is at once the fairest and the most celebrated of lakes.

It would seem that a country so broken into ridges and precipices and so covered with glaciers could hardly be inhabited. Yet Switzerland has a population of more than two millions of people, and they seem as much attached to their wild country as if it were the fairest and the most fruitful spot on the earth.

Among the wonderful phenomena of this region are the avalanches-huge masses of snow and ice, which rush from their foundations and plunge into the valleys and gorges beneath. They are of several kinds—some being masses of drifting snow set in motion by the wind; some are heaps of snow rolling over and increasing in size as they descend; some consist of large fields of snow sliding in one mass from their bed; some are enormous bodies of ice, either rolling or sliding from their foundations.

They

Travellers who have been in Switzerland, and have witnessed these amazing operations of nature describe them as at once terrific and sublime. often descend with a noise like the report of artillery, and not unfrequently bury whole villages beneath their stupendous masses. Sometimes a valley is buried thirty or forty feet deep in snow, which does not disappear till late in the following summer. Travellers are thus often overtaken and overwhelmed, herds of cattle are buried, houses and their inhabitants are overlaid and often destroyed.

A few years since, a single house, standing at the foot of a steep mountain, was suddenly overwhelmed by an avalanche of snow and buried to the depth of

thirty feet. The inhabitants heard the report of the mass loosed from its bed and descending from cliff to cliff, above. Startled by the ominous sound, they rushed from the house, leaving an infant in the cradle. They were all separated in their flight and buried apart from one another. The snow however was light and they were able to breathe. The man worked his way back to the house; but it had taken him fourteen hours, yet when he got there, he found the infant safe in the cradle !

He then began to seek for the other members of his family. Having found a shovel, he was able to work rapidly and to advantage. At a distance of seventy feet, he found his wife still alive, but faint from the want of food, she having been in the snow nearly two days.

All the other members of the family were found except a boy of about four years old. After intense labor for ten days they gave up the search, concluding that he was dead; for even if he escaped perishing from the cold, he must have been famished from the want of food.

They excavated passages from the house to the stable where they found their two cows, and they also

discovered three goats after they had been buried for nearly a fortnight. These were found standing together, and in order to subsist they had eaten off all the hair from one another!

Beneath the mass of snow the family lived till the spring; they had made galleries from one place to another, like the streets of a city; and it was not till the month of May that they were delivered from their prison. Even then, the snow lay in masses of eight or ten feet in depth. It was however 30 solid as to permit them to walk upon it. They now went to find their neighbors who lived in a valley immediately below them. They found them still alive, and to their unspeakable joy and surprise, they here discovered their missing child who had been borne away by the snow of the avalanche, and deposited near the door of the cottage in the valley. He was entirely unhurt though benumbed with cold. After some care he was restored, and remained with his new friends, till spring permitted his parents to go abroad and hold communion with their neighbors.

SONGS OF THE SEASONS.

I.

JANUARY.

Month of frost and month of snow,
Let your biting breezes blow :
Bind in chains the trembling river,
Bid the forest moan and shiver,
Pile the clouds in blackening heaps,
Lash to foam the briny deeps;
Riding on thy snowy drift,
Hurl thy arrows keen and swift;
Make the traveller mend his pace;

Give the lagging school boy chase;
Bid the farmer house his cattle;
Make the loosened windows rattle;
Down the hollow chimney roar,
Down the spout the hail-storm pour;
Puff and blow at open door;

Bite poor goose's crimson toes;

Tingle poor old Towser's nose;