Chapter 4: The Whimsical Avalanche

It may happen, in Switzerland, that mighty masses of snow and ice, sometimes as big as the capitol at Washington, and as high as Bunker Hill monument, will roll down the mountain sides without giving any notice. These crush whole forests, bury villages, tear rocks to pieces, knock off bits of the mountain sides and kill thousands of people, cows, goats and horses.

Though large enough to engulf an army, or a battleship, they are very small, when first born, up in the very high Alps.

Starting as a snow ball, they grow large, very quickly, every moment, and finally become immense. Then, they roll along over many miles, carrying destruction in their path, until they tumble over precipices, or reach low land that is level. That is the reason why they are so named, for avalanche means “to the valley.”

There are many causes of an avalanche and a little thing may start one of these terrors. The irregular melting, by the morning sun, of ice, in light or shade, the fall of an icicle, the tumbling of a stone, or a sliver of rock, or even the firing of a gun, which shakes the overhanging, or piled up snow, will begin one of these revolving globes.

Now in old times, all Swiss folk used to think that an avalanche was alive, and was having a jolly time, enjoying itself, when sliding and rolling, leaping and dashing down the mountain slopes, in its mad race, from the sky to the plain. This was its way of enjoying itself, with a short life and a merry one. It grew faster than anything else known. For, while a glacier might take a thousand years to develop, from snowflakes into miles of solid ice, like a frozen river, it required only a few minutes for an avalanche to spring from babyhood into full size, with a power exceeding that of a thousand giants.

Being, at its birth, only an inch or two in diameter, this infant son of the King of the Frost Giants, the avalanche soon became the child, which, as it grew up, so terribly fast, took after its daddy. It liked to flatten out trees, and houses, and smash things. It generally so frightened men, dogs, cats and the big animals, that dared to come near the everlasting heights of ice and snow, where the Frost Giants lived, that, in old times, no one in winter went up to the high peaks.

As a rule, nobody knows, either in summer or winter, just when the avalanches will fall, or whether they will be made of light, powdery, dry snow, or of snow that is heavy, wet, and like what the boys call “soakers.” Yet there are some old men in Switzerland, who can foretell avalanches, as our wise men try to do with the weather.

Once upon a time, the Frost Giant’s baby, of which we are going to tell, was born, and great things were expected of it, even when it was only as big as a snowflake. But, when it grew up, to be a real avalanche, it behaved very differently from all the others. It disappointed its daddy and its uncles awfully. The Frost Giants like to make all the mischief they can, while this one wanted to help men, instead of hurting them, and made a new record in the history of colossal snowballs.