ce with the valley, we have a
record of what has gone on in this part of the mountain wilderness.
Within the period of history and tradition, three very great mountain
falls have occurred in this field, each having made its memory good by
widespread disaster which it brought to the people of the _chalets_.
The last of these was brought about by the fall of a great peak which
spread itself out in a vast field of ruins in the valley below. The
belt of destruction was about half a mile wide and three miles long.
When the present writer last saw it, a quarter of a century ago, it
was still a wilderness of great rocks, but here and there the process
of their decay was giving a foothold for herbage, and in a few
centuries the field will doubtless be so verdure-clad that its story
will not be told on its face. It is likely, however, to be preserved
in the memory of the people, and this through a singular and pathetic
tradition which has grown up about the place, one which, if not true,
comes at least among the legends which we should like to believe.

As told the present writer by a native of the district, it happened
when, in the nighttime the mountain came down, the herdsmen and their
cows gathered in the _chalets_--stout buildings which are prepared to
resist avalanches of snow. In one of these, which was protected from
crushing by the position of the stones which covered it, a solitary
herdsman found himself alive in his unharmed dwelling. With him in the
darkness were the cows, a store of food and water, and his provisions
for the long summer season. With nothing but hope to animate him, he
set to work burrowing upward among the rocks, storing the _debris_ in
the room of the _chalet_. He toiled for some months, but finally
emerged to the light of day, blanched by his long imprisonment in the
darkness, but with the strength to bear him to his home. In place of
the expected warm welcome, the unhappy man found himself received as a
ghost. He was exorcised by the priest and driven away to the distance.
It was only when long afterward his path of escape was discovered that
his history became known.

Returning to the account of the _debris_ which descends at varied
speed into the torrents, we find that when the detritus encounters the
action of these vigorous streams it is rapidly ground to pieces while
it is pushed down the steep channels to the lower country. Where the
stones are of such size that the stream can urge them on