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This great stretch of shale was very treacherous going, as on the both sides were deep gulches, or erosions, made by floods from thaws and storms. An abandoned trail ran quite close to one of these ravines but the land-slides of shale had compelled the people at Pebbly Pit to break out a new and safer trail through the middle of the field.
The mountains are very high and steep about Carson, Eagle and Washoe Valleys very high and very steep, and so when the snow gets to melting off fast in the Spring and the warm surface-earth begins to moisten and soften, the disastrous land-slides commence.
The mountains are very high and steep about Carson, Eagle and Washoe Valleys very high and very steep, and so when the snow gets to melting off fast in the Spring and the warm surface-earth begins to moisten and soften, the disastrous land-slides commence.
So huge an undertaking the isthmus is forty-nine miles wide at this point was an engineering task of unprecedented size, and involved stamping out the yellow fever, obtaining a water supply, building hospitals and dwellings and finding a sufficient labor force, as well as the more difficult problems of excavating soil and building locks in regions where land-slides constantly threatened to destroy important parts of the work.
"I'm game for anything, Mollie dear, as long as you keep away from land-slides and wild animals." "Just hear the child!" said Mollie disgustedly. "As if an adventure would be an adventure without a little danger mixed in!" "Just what is your great idea, Mollie?" asked Betty mildly. Mollie was beginning to glower. And if somebody did not stop her at the beginning, there was sure to be a fracas.
In our own day, after having excavated the gallery of Clichy, with a banquette to receive the principal water-conduit of Ourcq, a piece of work which was executed in a trench ten metres deep; after having, in the midst of land-slides, and with the aid of excavations often putrid, and of shoring up, vaulted the Bievre from the Boulevard de l'Hopital, as far as the Seine; after having, in order to deliver Paris from the floods of Montmartre and in order to provide an outlet for that river-like pool nine hectares in extent, which crouched near the Barriere des Martyrs, after having, let us state, constructed the line of sewers from the Barriere Blanche to the road of Aubervilliers, in four months, working day and night, at a depth of eleven metres; after having a thing heretofore unseen made a subterranean sewer in the Rue Barre-du-Bec, without a trench, six metres below the surface, the superintendent, Monnot, died.
"It would be a strange condition of things where nothing did happen," I answered; and just then the horn of the mail-carrier sounded, and the lumbering four-horse coach rattled down the street in sight of our windows. "There," I said, "is your U. S. M. safe and sound, road-agents and land-slides to the contrary and of no effect."
Cities have been shaken down by earthquakes, and the ocean has swept in over the land, drowning thousands of people. Even the mountains, which stand upon broad and firm foundations, sometimes bring disaster, by means of avalanches and land-slides, to the people who live at their bases.
The rainy season was at its height, and how it rained! The river was a raging torrent, and from the railway "cut" alongside continuous land-slides of loose gravelly soil were threatening the track with demolition. Indeed, at some points this had actually occurred, and the train several times had to be stopped to allow the gangs of workmen to clear the way.
The forest about us was dense and cool, the sky above us was cloudless and brilliant with sunshine, the broad lake before us was glassy and clear, or rippled and breezy, or black and storm-tossed, according to Nature's mood; and its circling border of mountain domes, clothed with forests, scarred with land-slides, cloven by canons and valleys, and helmeted with glittering snow, fitly framed and finished the noble picture.
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