Those who live on the banks of the narrow, swift-running torrents that intersect the valleys, have another danger to encounter. Those little streams, greatly swollen in summer by the melting of the snow on the higher ranges of the mountains, frequently overflow their boundaries and spread destruction and death around. If, as occasionally happens, the stream becomes choked by débris from the overhanging precipices, it is turned aside from its natural channel, and flows in quite another direction; sometimes forming in its progress a lake or a small tarn, which never again subsides, and which may destroy in a moment the long and arduous labour of the husbandman. A third and even more tremendous catastrophe is that known as a berg-fall or mountain land-slip; when an overhanging portion of some steep precipice becomes loosened from its foundations, and on some unusual impetus being given to it, topples suddenly over and hurls itself upon the plain beneath it. These berg-falls occur very frequently in the Tyrol, sometimes occasioning comparatively little damage, and even adding an element of picturesqueness to the great natural beauty of the region; while on other occasions they are followed by widespread havoc and destruction. In 1771 a terrible calamity of this nature befell the little village of Alleghe, situated on the banks of the river Cordevole, not far from the town of Caprile in the Tyrol. The district was a fertile and beautiful one, with several scattered villages surrounded by orchards and corn-fields, and protected from the fierce blasts of winter by the range of high mountains, which were at once its safeguard and its peril. At the base of one of the loftiest of this great range, called Monte Pezza, stood the little village of Alleghe. In the month of January, when the mountains around were all covered with heavy snow, a charcoal-burner was at his work in the woods of Monte Pezza, when his attention was suddenly arrested by a distinctly tremulous movement of the ground, and by the frequent rattling down of stones and débris from the rocky precipices behind him. These were sufficient indications of danger to the practised ear of the mountaineer. He knew too well the portents of those overwhelming catastrophes that are continually to be dreaded; and on listening more attentively, he became convinced that serious peril was impending. Even as he watched, several large boulders became detached from the face of the mountain, and rolled down to a considerable distance; while at intervals the trembling motion of the ground was too evident to be mistaken. It was growing late in the afternoon, and darkness would soon fall on the valley; so hastily quitting his work, he made the best of his way down to the nearest village, and with the excitement naturally caused by anxiety and fear, he told the inhabitants of the alarming indications he had just witnessed, and urged them to make their escape without loss of time from the threatened danger.