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RAMBLES IN GERMANY
a bridge, and laid waste the whole region. An English traveller, then on his road to Chiavenna, relates that he traversed the chasm on a rotten uneven plank, and found but few inches remaining of the road overhanging the river.[1] It was an awful invasion of one element on another. The whole road to Chiavenna was broken up, and the face of the mountain so changed that, when reconstructed, the direction of the route was in many places entirely altered. The region of these changes was pointed out to us; but no discernible traces remained of where the road had been. All here was devastation—the giant ruins of a primæval world; and the puny remnants of man’s handiwork were utterly obliterated. Puny, however, as our
- ↑ Mr. Hayward, in the interesting account with which he has favoured his friends of his perilous journey over the Splugen in 1834. Mr. Hayward says, that the storm in question was what is called there a Wolkenbruch, (cloud-break or water-spout). A mass of clouds, surcharged with electric matter and rain, which had been collecting for weeks along the whole range of the Alps, came down at last like an avalanche from the sky. I once witnessed a phenomenon of this sort at Genoa. The Italians called it a Meteora. A cloud, surcharged with electricity and water, burst above our heads in one torrent of what was rather a cataract than rain. It lasted about twenty minutes, and sufficed to carry away all the bridges over the Bisanzio, flowing between Genoa and Albaro, and to lay flat all the walls which in that hilly country support the soil—so that the landscape was opened and greatly improved. Cottages, cattle, and even persons were carried away. In the Alps, such a rush of water from the heavens was aided by the torrents that rushed from the mountain tops, and a sudden melting of snows.
