Recently (see date of essay) we have witnessed a succession of remarkable evidences of Nature’s destructive powers. The fires of Vesuvius, the earth-throes of the sub-equatorial Andes, and the submarine disturbance which has shaken Hawaii, have presented to us the various forms of destructive action which the earth’s, subterranean forces can assume. In the disastrous floods which have recently visited the Alpine cantons of Switzerland, we have evidence of the fact that natural forces which we are in the habit of regarding as beneficent and restorative may exhibit themselves as agents of the most widespread destruction. I have pointed out elsewhere (see p. 226) how enormous is the amount of power of which the rain-cloud is the representative; and in doing so I have endeavoured to exhibit the contrast between the steady action of the falling shower and the energy of the processes of which rain is in reality the equivalent. But in the floods which have lately ravaged Switzerland we see the same facts illustrated, not by numerical calculations or by the results134 of philosophical experiments, but in action, and that action taking place on the most widely extended scale. The whole of the south-eastern, or, as it may be termed, the Alpine half of Switzerland, has suffered from these floods. If a line be drawn from the Lake of Constance, in the north-east of Switzerland, to the Col de Balme, in the south-west, it will divide Switzerland into two nearly equal portions, and scarcely a canton within the eastern of these divisions has escaped without great damage.

The cantons which have suffered most terribly are those of Tessin, Grisons, and St. Gall. The St. Gothard, Splugen, and St. Bernhardin routes have been rendered impassable. Twenty-seven lives were lost in the St. Gothard Pass, besides horses and waggons full of merchandise. It is stated that on the three routes upwards of eighty persons perished. In the village of Loderio alone, no less than fifty deaths occurred. So terrible a flood has not taken place since the year 1834. Nor have the cantons of Uri and Valais escaped. From Unterwalden we hear that the heavy rains which took place a fortnight ago have carried away several large bridges, and many of the rivers continue still very swollen. I have already described how enormous the material losses are which have been caused by these floods. Many places are under water; others in ruins or absolutely destroyed. In Tessin alone the damage is estimated at forty thousand pounds sterling.

A country like Switzerland must always be liable to the occurrence, from time to time, of catastrophes of135 this sort. Or rather, perhaps, we should draw a distinction between the two divisions of Switzerland referred to above. Of these the one may be termed the mountain half, and the other the lake half of the country. It is the former portion of the country which is principally subject to the dynamical action of water. A long-continued and heavy rainfall over the higher lands cannot fail to produce a variety of remarkable effects, where the arrangement of mountains and passes, hills, valleys, and ravines is so complicated. There are places where a large volume of water can accumulate until the barriers which have opposed its passage to the plains burst under its increasing weight; and then follow those destructive rushes of water which sweep away whole villages at once. It is, in fact, the capacity of the Swiss mountain region for damming up water, far more than any other circumstance, which renders the Swiss floods so destructive.

And then it must be remembered that there are at all times suspended over the plains and valleys which lie beneath the Alpine ranges enormous masses of water in the form of snow............