We may conveniently mention here a second type of landslide, where
masses of solid rock as well as the mantle of waste are involved in
the sudden movement. Such slips occur when valleys have been rapidly
deepened by streams or glaciers and their sides have not yet been
graded. A favorable condition is where the strata dip (i.e. incline
downwards) towards the valley (Fig. 11), or are broken by joint planes
dipping in the same direction. The upper layers, including perhaps the
entire mountain side, have been cut across by the valley trench and
are left supported only on the inclined surface of the underlying
rocks. Water may percolate underground along this surface and loosen
the cohesion between the upper and the underlying strata by converting
the upper surface of a shale to soft wet clay, by dissolving layers of
a limestone, or by removing the cement of a sandstone and converting
it into loose sand. When the inclined surface is thus lubricated the
overlying masses may be launched into the valley below. The solid
rocks are broken and crushed in sliding and converted into waste
consisting, like that of talus, of angular unsorted fragments, blocks
of all sizes being mingled pell-mell with rock meal and dust. The
principal effects of landslides may be gathered from the following
examples.
At Gohna, India, in 1893, the face of a spur four thousand feet high,
of the lower ranges of the Himalayas, slipped into the gorge of the
headwaters of the Ganges River in successive rock falls which lasted
for three days. Blocks of stone were projected for a mile, and clouds
of limestone dust were spread over the surrounding country. The débris
formed a dam one thousand feet high, extending for two miles along the
valley. A lake gathered behind this barrier, gradually rising until it
overtopped it in a little less than a year. The upper portion of the
dam then broke, and a terrific rush of water swept down the valley in
a wave which, twenty miles away, rose one hundred and sixty feet in
height. A narrow lake is still held by the strong base of the dam.
In 1896, after forty days of incessant rain, a cliff of sandstone
slipped into the Yangtse River in China, reducing the width of the
channel to eighty yards and causing formidable rapids.
[Illustration: Fig. 12. Bowlders of Weathering, Granite Quarry,
Cape Ann, Massachusetts]
At Flims, in Switzerland, a prehistoric landslip flung a dam eighteen
hundred feet high across the headwaters of the Rhine. If spread evenly
over a surface of twenty-eight square miles, the material would cover
it to a depth of six hundred and sixty feet. The barrier is not yet
entirely cut away, and several lakes are held in shallow basins on its
hummocky surface.
A slide from the precipitous river front of the citadel hill of
Quebec, in 1889, dashed across Champlain Street, wrecking a number of
houses and causing the death of forty-five persons. The strata here
are composed of steeply dipping slate (Fig. 10).
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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