The Republican

A NIGHT IN AN AVALANCHE.

It was curious enough how I came to see an avalanche. We don't have many of them in our country, I believe; at least, they never fall near to the highways and country villages, seemingly for the accommodation of sight-seers, as they do at the Wengern Alp, and in a hundred other places of Switzerland and the Tyrol.

Contrary to all arrangements and expectations of the dear old uncle who had reared me, I had not got further along in life than to a third-class clerkship in the State Department at Washington, and this only because I could write a fine hand, and make fancy capitals, said my disappointed uncle.

I believe uncle was thoroughly ashamed of my getting into the department at all. He would a hundred times over have preferred that I had been a common farmer. But when the hard times came, and when the hard times got harder, and the old farm, going under a mortgage, was only rescued by my savings as a third-class clerk, uncle sank his shame in his gratitude, and my fancy writing was ridiculed no longer. A little good penmanship had kept my uncle out of the poor-house.

It did something for me, too, later.

Still, it was weary enough for me at last, reading and copying endless dispatches of the Chief Clerk to our Consuls in Europe, and all that without any apparent hope of ever becoming Chief Clerk myself. One day I was copying a dispatch of the Secretary to the Consul at Z—. It was to the effect that from that day on he would, in accordance with his request, be allowed $1,000 a year for clerk hire. "He will want a clerk, then, of course," I said to myself, "and if I could secure the situation, I might be happy still." I whistled meditatively. I would see Europe at least, and that would be a change; anyway, I would be no longer liable to become a fixture as a third-class clerk in the department. I didn't want promotion so much as I wanted a change. I got the latter as the sequel will show. That evening the dispatch of the department, copied in my best hand, left for Europe, accompanied by a private note of my own to the Consul. As a specimen of my writing. I referred to the inclosed dispatch, and informed the Consul that I could speak the German language, having learned it, evenings, during my stay in Washington.

Perhaps the last remark, and not my fine writing, settled the business. Clerks who can speak foreign languages are in demand with our Consuls.

In six weeks from that day I had peeped into the great cities of London, Paris, and Brussels, and was now standing at the clerk's desk of the American Consulate at Z—.

The business was not burdensome. With the office open but five hours a day, we were happy. I had beautiful times—so did the Consul.

What wonderfully various duties Consuls have to perform in these five hours, though! What a combination of pater and mater familias the Consul is! Though never severe, his work is as multifarious as are the characters of a thousand tourists. His office is the grand depot of all strange things. The consulate at Z— was no exception to the rule. It was the receptacle of everything, from a dainty love letter with a lock of hair, to wills of invalids and Saratoga trunks. Everybody called there, many "loafed" there, and one poor melancholy tramp claimed the immortal privilege of hanging himself in the Consul's wood house—just to be under the flag, as it were.

Tourists and tramps, however, are not alone in furnishing the Consul with the spiced variety of life. Uncle Sam contributes his mite occasionally.

Among the Washington letters last winter was one from our worthy Commissioner of Pensions, asking the Consul to investigate, and furnish evidence that certain widows and minor daughters of United States pensioners living in his district had not married, and thus forfeited their claim to further aid from the Government. It was easy enough to secure this evidence in most cases. Those living near the city were invited to call at the consulate, and it was sometimes a matter of sly pleasure to the Consul and myself to listen to the embarrassed confessions of pretty widows that Cupid had never cast his net a second time for them. But there was one pensioner from whom repeated official notes, written in good German, and with my finest flourish of capitals, brought no message, pro or con.

Pensioner No. 1004 seemed to feel that Uncle Sam had no right to ask so indelicate a question.

All the certificates, except 1004, were indorsed and ready to be returned.

"This pensioner," said the Consul to his chief clerk one morning, "is probably either dead or married, and I am determined to find out which. It is not so wonderfully far from here to the village of Bleiberg, and if you have an inclination, you may take the next train and go there. Come back by Saturday, and, of course, make the expenses as trifling as you can."

I had long wished for a stroll of some sort into the magnificent valleys of the Carinthian Alps, and here seemed my opportunity.

I can't say that the cars whizzed me very suddenly away to the pretty town of Bleiberg, for in fact the trains whiz dreadfully slowly in the Tyrol. I was twenty-five miles still from Bleiberg when I transferred my hand valise and myself from a second-class railway car into a first-class mountain diligence.

It was a wonderfully beautiful valley I was to ascend to Bleiberg. There are no finer mountain prospects anywhere. It seems to me sometimes that all the ornamental work of the creation has been expended on Switzerland and the Tyrol.

Usually, when in the mountains, I pay the diligence conductor a franc pourboire, and ride outside with the driver, or up in the imperial, perched like a leather bonnet on the top of the vehicle. I determined fully to do so this time.

How capricious is the mind of man, I reflected, on entering the little station, and seeing a young lady in a velvet jacket and gray kids buy inside coupe No. 1 for Bleiberg. In a minute and a half I had changed my mind, and was the owner of coupe ticket No. 2—and yet the weather had not changed, the sun shone as warmly as ever, and the mountains, right and left, were as magnificent as five minutes before, when I had told the conductor I would share his outside perch with him.

The velvet jacket, though fitting closely to a neat form, I didn't mind so much; but gray kids on a pair of pretty hands inside a diligence coupe, slowly ascending a romantic mountain valley on a charming spring day, were simply irresistible.

I helped my traveling companion to her seat, fixed my own precious baggage into the big box behind, and then proceeded, naturally enough, to occupy inside seat No. 2. There was but one passenger beside myself. I was never in this world accused of being a flirt or a gallant; but I submit to my bachelor readers if there is anything extraordinary in this fact that in twenty minutes the two occupants of that mountain diligence were tolerably acquainted.

We spoke, of course, in German. We noted the green fields at the edge of snowbanks, the singular costumes of the men passing us, and who hailed us with a "God greet you!" as they tipped their broad-brimmed hats.

We thought, too, how chilly they must be, even on a day like this, with their open red jackets, breeches only to the knee, and stockings only to the ankle. Still more interesting to us were the women, trudging along in their short black petticoats and dove-gray stockings, though the muddy roads sometimes interfered with any exact discrimination in the shades.

What struck us both as very singular, however, was the great similarity of our German accent. Miss Shelton—Miss Margot Shelton, to be more explicit—for I had seen her name on the ticket as I passed it to the conductor—was perfectly certain I was not a Swiss, much less an Austrian, and I was equally confident my fair companion was not a native to the Alps. Her German bore too strong an accent for that. I afterward learned she had thought my own a little curious. Once, just for the sport of the thing, I shouted something to the driver in English. How astonished I was to hear Miss Shelton add to it a phrase as English as my own! We held breath to explain, and in almost no time at all discovered that we were both Americans. Stranger discoveries followed—they always do. Miss Shelton's father had been a volunteer Captain in our army, and I myself had been within a rifle-shot of him when he fell at Vicksburg.

Her mother, a native of Bleiberg, took this only daughter and returned to her old home, stopping at the solicitations of friends, first for months, and now it had been years. In a moment I recalled what had been puzzling me for an hour. I had seen the name Shelton before somewhere.

Who was pensioner 1004 but Elsie Shelton—why had I not thought of that?—wife of Captain Shelton, killed at Vicksburg in June, 1863. How extremely singular! we both exclaimed.

Mrs. Elsie Shelton, I was soon informed, was not remarried.

The object of my journey was accomplished. I might return home at once. I did not, however. Besides, Miss Shelton insisted that I should go on and visit pretty Bleiberg, her mother and herself. I was easily persuaded.

Why had the Consul's letters not been answered? I asked, as we made a turn in the road. "O," said Miss Shelton, "mother and I were both coming next week to Z—, to visit a relative there, and so she proposed answering in person. Besides, she is not so poor that she cares dreadfully whether Uncle Sam stops the ten dollars or so a month or not. She always gives half of it to the postmaster's children and the rest to me for pin-money. Why, do you know, I bought these very gloves with some of that money at Innsbruck only two days ago;" and here the pretty hands and the gray kid gloves nestled coquettishly on her lap. By noon the church steeple of Bleiberg was in sight and in an hour the driver blew a shrill note or so on his horn, the villagers hastened to the windows of the houses as our four panting ponies passed on a gallop, and the little old postmaster lifted his blue cap and gave us a salute all round.

Mrs. Shelton was living with a friend, then absent, in a substantial two-story stone house not far from the post.

"This is Mr. —," said Miss Shelton, laughing, as she presented me to her mother, "a real American; and just think, he has come to ask, mamma, if you are married." The good-looking, embarrassed little widow soon unravelled the nonsense with which Miss Margot was seeking to overwhelm us, and I was welcomed not only as an American, but as one of the "boys in blue" who had been with Grant at Vicksburg.

When the dinner was over I strolled out through one of the loveliest situated villages of the Alps. The view down the valley we had just ascended was enchanting. Behind the pretty town, and edged by a green meadow sloping upward, was a forest of tall, dark firs, and above this an alp, angling up the side of a steep mountain, known to all tourists as the "Rigi" of the Kernthal.

It was only the 25th of February, but the sun seemed as warm as in midsummer. The grass, so wonderfully green, was high enough for pasture, and violets and daisies peeped out everywhere. It was "dangerously warm, in fact," muttered the little postmaster in the blue cap, as I handed him a letter to post to the Consul at Z—, saying everything was well, but I couldn't possibly be back on Saturday—"dangerously warm, because there had not been so much snow on the mountains in fifty years as now, and already people began to hear of avalanches falling out of season."

Bleiberg, however, is safe enough I thought to myself, as I glanced up the sides of the old peak, where, sure enough, there were oceans of snow and ice glistening in the sunshine. But it was a mile away, and between pretty Bleiberg and it swept, like a dark veil, the forest of tall fir-trees. Besides, how could a village that had slept a hundred years be waked up now to an adventure just to gratify a young American?

I don't like it—it's too warm—and there's no telling," continued my would-be pessimist of a postmaster. I haven't lived in these regions well-nigh to fifty years for nothing. Snowing all winter, and hot sun and daisies in February, aren't natural. It means avalanches to somebody somewhere."

I had almost forgotten that, as I left the house of my fair entertainers. I was informed that it was carnival-day in the village, and that at three o'clock I must be on hand to see the procession. It was already after three, and I hurried back to be offered a good place to see from, at the upper chamber window of Miss Margot, where, joined by her mother, we awaited the boys in striped trousers and masks, and the men with music and flags. It was a novel sight, as the long procession filed up the road and approached the house where we were waiting. A parade in a mountain valley always is novel. The contrast of the bright colors of the costumes and flags with the green foliage and the greener grass at the road-sides; the comparative silence, disturbed only by the echoing of the notes of music from the lofty rocks; the seeming diminutiveness of everything—of the men, of the thread-like roads, of even the houses and trees, as seen under the shadow of the towering mountains—all added impressiveness to the thing.

There were possibly a hundred persons in the procession, with a score of boys following at the sides, and all the villagers looking on. I don't know why it was, but somehow they seemed less joyous than I had seen the peasants at other village carnivals. Was it the unusual heat, or was there in their minds some flitting presentiment of evil? Some of these old men had had experiences—sad enough, doubtless—of the unexpected dangers to life in these high valleys. I recall now a sort of uneasiness I noticed on the faces of those nearest us, and, as I thought, an occasional glancing over our house at the great mountain behind. In some mysterious way this uncanny feeling was communicating itself to us also. Avalanches, however, give no signs of approaching, no warning. They are unexpected, as sudden, as earthquakes, and sometimes lightning is not much more rapid in its work. When a million tons of ice and snow slip from the side of a mountain, they are not long in reaching the bottom.

The gay procession moved on. The music and the laughter grew merrier. Even the little postmaster in the blue cap was engaged in a loud guffaw at a clown marching on stilts. I had filled my pockets with bonbons at the post, and we were throwing them to the boys nearest us in the procession.

Suddenly the music ceased; there was an awful whizzing in the air; a cry of "Avalanche!" "Avalanche!" and in an instant roaring and cracking, as of falling forests. In ten short seconds an awful flood of snow, mangled trees, ice and stones passed the house, like the swell of a mighty sea. Everything shook. The procession disappeared as if ingulfed by an earthquake. Houses, right and left, tumbled over and were buried in one single instant. The air, cooled for a moment, and again hot, was rent with the screams of the mangled. An awful catastrophe had befallen us; the wrath of the mountain was upon the village! For a moment we stood paralyzed—speechless. We had been saved.

My first impulse was to rush to the street, and to drag my companions with me; but there was no street. Even the garden had disappeared in a foam of snow and ice. We thought of the back window at the embankment, but as we tore it open a single glance toward the mountain told us the horror was but begun. "The forest!" we all shouted in a breath. It was gone, all gone, as if mown by a mighty reaper, and masses of other snow seemed ready to slide. The white brow of the mountain still gleamed in the sunshine and seemed to laugh at the desolation. Another whizzing, a roar, and with our own eyes we saw the side of the mountain start. Instantly and together we sprang down the steps into the lower room. There was a roll of thunder, a mighty crash, and then all was darkness. We were buried alive beneath an avalanche.

What my first thoughts were I am unable to recall. I only remember our fearful cries for help; how we shouted separately, and then united on one word, crying together again and again, our only answer the silence of the grave.

Every soul in the village, probably, had been killed, or, like ourselves, had been buried beneath the snow and ice of the mountain. It was only after we had exhausted ourselves with vain cries for help that we meditated on helping ourselves. We had not been injured. We remembered that we were in the little sitting-room down-stairs, the windows only of which seemed broken in, and filled with snow, ice and stones. The stairway was also filled with snow and the debris of the crushed walls. Above us all was desolation.

How deep the avalanche lay across us we feared even to conjecture. As is my custom when in the Alps, I had a flask in my pocket of the best brandy. I persuaded my companions to drink, and drank myself until the last drop disappeared. Possibly it gave us courage.

The furniture in the room seemed all in its proper place. We could move about, but it was becoming terribly cold, and we felt the sleepy chill, that dreadful precursor of death by freezing, overcoming us. Once we were certain we heard voices above us, and again we shouted to try to tell them we were still alive. We listened; the voices were gone—we were abandoned to our fate.

For hours we had alternately shouted and listened, until we sank down in despair. It must have been midnight when, in our gropings about the little chamber, our hands came on a wax candle. In a few moments we had light—light to die by.

It would have been a strange sight for an artist—that buried room, with the dim light, the windows filled with snow, and the three inmates there waiting death. Once I attempted to encourage my companions, though myself hopeless, by telling of people who had been dug out of avalanches safe and well; but my words brought only groans. Hours went by. I don't know whether we were sleeping or freezing, when I started at hearing a voice cry, "A light! a light!" I sprang to my feet, and again the voice cried. "A light!" In ten minutes three half-frozen, half-insane human beings were tenderly lifted from the grave into the gray light of the morning. A hundred noble souls had labored the long night through, seeking the buried.

Every man and woman, from every village in the whole valley, had hurried to the scene, and was straining every nerve to rescue those to whom life might still be clinging. We were among the last taken from the snow and rocks, which had lain upon us thirty feet in depth. Did those brave rescuers wonder that we knelt to them, and kissed the hems of their ragged garments?

Beautiful Bleiberg is no more. Half of those whom we saw dancing along in the procession of the carnival, in the bright sunshine, sleep among the violets on the hill-side. The snow, and the ice, and the black bowlders from the mountain, and the dark fir-trees, still lie, in this early summer of 1879, in one mass in the valley. We all left as soon as we could travel. I went home to Z—.

My chief has resigned, and I am now acting Consul in his place. Should the Senate confirm all the new appointments, I expect to remain as Consul.

Miss Shelton thinks also of remaining, and when Americans wander to Z— they will find the latch-string of our home at the Consulate on the outside of the door.

One word and I am done. Mrs. Shelton has lost a part of her pension—so much of it as was allowed for a minor daughter. I have so reported it to the Commissioner at Washington.—Harper's Magazine for February.