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Show THE AVALANCHE. From time immemorial poets hayo written and bards have sung in laudation of the beauties of ttio fisecy element which yearly envelopes our surrounding mountains in a shrewd of spotless whe, but not a word of the power of destruction and devastation devasta-tion which ever lies hidden in the midst of its glistening flakes; and many persons who live in this land of avalanches, waterspouts, cloud bursts, earthquakes, and other convulsions and freaks of nature, have never-had never-had tho privilege of beholding the "Beautiful Snow" in any other than a quiescent state. Thinking that a pencil pen-cil sketch of one of these avalanches, more commonly known as a euow-slike, euow-slike, would bo interesting to your numerous readers less favored than myself, is my excuse for the present intrusion. Tho moBt destructive of these slides of which there are several varieties are caused by tho action of the warm south winds upon the vast fields of snow lying upon the steep sides of the mountain, and tho first intimation which the voyageur receives re-ceives of the impending catastropho is a low, but to the ear of the experienced expe-rienced mountaineer, ominous sound like a concussion in the air caused by I the sudden .-sinking and breaking I away of a large fiold of snow upon Borne of the distant mountain orests, immediately followed by a prolonged muttering sound like distant thunder. Tho reports or succeisive peals be-como be-como plainer as the mass gains speed, and is accompanied by a -crushing, grinding noiso like nothing else on earth, but the combined sound of the beating of the angry waves of the ocean on a rock coast, withtbo steam escaping from a hundred engines; and the slide rushes into view like the very incarnation of destruction, grinding rocks into powder, and uprooting up-rooting and rending whole forests of trees which may happen to stand in its course. Nothing meets tho ye of tho astonished panic-stricken spectator specta-tor but wave on wave of snow, ice, fragments of rock and huge trunks of trees, rolling, tumbling, tossing in wild, inextricable confusion. The mass rushes with irresistable forco down the steep inclined plane of the mountain moun-tain side, bearing destruction to every thing in its path, leaving desolation and barrou rocks in i( path until at last, with ono loud, wild burst of thunder-Bound, it plunges into the bed of the canon, and as if angry at tho obstacle which impedes its headlong head-long course, it frequently runs hundreds hun-dreds of feet up the side of the opposite oppo-site mountain. To a person who is upon the opposite side of the canon and considers himself as safe as if he weie in Abraham's bosom, tho scene ia magnificently grand and awe inspiring, in-spiring, but to the hapless miner or ore hauler, who is in close proximity to the path of the avalanche, it is an object of terror. A person who reads an account in the daily journals of tbo occurreuceof a snowslide in one of the Cotton woods, and the finding of several of th: bodies of its victims buried six, tcnorthiity feet deep in the snow and debris but who has never looked with his own eyes upon one of these veritable be-Bms be-Bms of destruction, can have no conception con-ception of the nightmare of fear which oppresses the heart of the poor miner who, as he crawlB slowly along the side of a precipitous mountain, beholds in the distance above him a huge mass of snow and ice fall from the summit of a clifl, or experience the throb of terror which his heart gives when he feels the snow beneath his feet suddenly sud-denly sink, and commence to move down the mountain. M. |