Memphis Daily Appeal

THE BROKEN PALISADE.

A Huge Mass of Rock Hurled Down the Side of Lookout Mountain.

[Chattanooga Commercial, 9th.]

At half past three o'clock yesterday afternoon about one-third of the huge mass of rock which has been so long moving from the parent ledge at Bragg's Bluff, Lookout mountain, was forced to fall, and as it struck the ground it was shivered into many rocks, a great portion of which went whirling down the mountain side with a great crash, raising immense clouds of dust, shivering trees and making a noise like the roar of many cannons. It shook the ground so that men a quarter of a mile distant felt the shock distinctly. Imagine hundreds of pieces of rock from eight to ten feet square falling forty feet, striking solid ground and then being hurled down a steep mountain side of forty-five or fifty degrees incline, among great forest trees, over smaller rocks, among underbrush, etc., and you get some idea of what happened at Lookout yesterday. The treetops were made, in many cases, to snap like whips, and in some cases large trees were broken entirely off. Tops were whirled together, and made the air musical as they disentangled themselves. The sight was grand, and was rendered more than grand taken in connection with the shaking of the earth, the loud roaring as the rocks crashed among the trees, and the great clouds of dust caused thereby. Nothing short of some fierce commotion in nature, combining all the grandeur of the severest thunder-storm with all the terror of an earthquake shock, could equal it. The work of forcing the mass down was done under the supervision of Messrs. Hutson & Capehart, and was accomplished principally by the use of jackscrews.