The army of General Macdonald, in his celebrated passage of the Splügen in December, 1800, suffered severely from these dust-avalanches. A troupe of horse was completely cut through while on the march; and thirty dragoons were precipitated into a gulf below the road, where they all perished. And again, some days afterwards, in descending a gorge, the columns were repeatedly severed by avalanches; and more than one hundred soldiers, with a number of horses and mules, were lost. On one of these occasions the drummer of a regiment was carried away; and it is said that they heard him beating his drum in the gorge below, in the hope that his comrades would come to his rescue. Help, however, was out of the question. The sounds gradually became fainter, and the poor lad must have perished in the cold. The ground-avalanches are different from those just described, consisting of dense and almost solid masses of snow which have lain for a long time exposed to atmospheric influences. They are much heavier than the dust-avalanches, and therefore more destructive; so that the inhabitants take great pains to protect themselves from this source of danger. Thickly planted trees are the best protection against avalanches of every kind. Snow which has fallen in a wood cannot very well shift its place; and when masses of snow descend from the slopes above, they are unable to break through so strong a barrier. Small shrubs, such as rhododendrons, or even heaths and meadow-grass, are often sufficient to prevent the slipping of the snow; and therefore it is very imprudent not to allow them to grow freely on mountain-slopes. But it is still more dangerous to cut down protecting forests, or even to do so partly. This was illustrated by the case of a mountain in the Pyrenees, in the lofty valley of Neste; after it had been partially cleared of trees, a tremendous avalanche fell down in 1846, and in its fall swept away more than fifteen thousand fir-trees. The Swiss records tell us what a terrible scourge the avalanche can be in villages which in summer-time appear such calm and happy scenes of pastoral life. M. Joanne, in the introduction to his valuable "Itinéraire de la Suisse"[13] gives a list of twelve of the most destructive avalanches that have fallen in Switzerland. In old days they seem to have been as great a source of danger as in modern times. Thus we find that in the year 1500, a caravan of six hundred persons was swept away in crossing the Great St. Bernard; three hundred were buried under an avalanche which fell from Monte Cassedra (Ticino). Another one in the year 1720, at Obergestelen, in the Rhone Valley, destroyed one hundred and twenty cottages, four hundred head of cattle, and eighty-eight persons. The bodies were buried in a large pit in the village cemetery, on the wall of which was engraved the following pathetic inscription: "O God, what sorrow!--eighty-eight in a single grave!" ("Gott, welche Trauer!--acht und achtzig in einem Grab!")