Meanwhile Agatha had spent several anxious hours. She was preparing her humble evening meal when the thundering uproar and the shaking of the hut filled her with the terrors of death. Seizing the infant, which lay awake in its cradle, she crossed the threshold, while the soil under her feet slid down into the valley. Escaping into the open air, she looked back and saw her hut and a sea of huge stone blocks roll down into the vale below, while the spot on which she stood remained unmoved. In this situation she was found by Bläsi, who, though a poor and ruined man, still thanked God for the wonderful preservation of his family. About a thousand feet lower down the mountain lived Bläsi’s brother Bastian, who, when the mountain slipped, was tending his herd on the opposite Righi. But his wife and her two little children were in his hut when it was buried beneath the stony avalanche. After the terrible commotion had subsided, the relations of Frau Mettler, anxious to ascertain her fate, hastened to the scene of desolation. The hut had disappeared, the green Alpine meadow was covered with a heap of ruins, but, not far from the former site of the humble cottage, the youngest child lay quietly sleeping. At the peril of his life, one of the infant’s relations clambered over the ruins and rescued the little sleeper, who, unhurt amidst the falling rafters of the hut and the ruins of the crumbling mountain, had been carried away with the bed on which he was reposing. On my last visit to Switzerland, I was informed that Sebastian Meinhardt Mettler, the child thus wonderfully saved, died in the year 1867, at the age of sixty-one. Some of the victims who had been buried in the ruins of the villages were dug out and restored to daylight; others, less fortunate, may have slowly perished, immured in a living grave; but by far the greater number were no doubt suddenly killed. The total number of those who were saved, either by the assistance of their friends, or by a timely flight, or by absence from their homes at the time of the disaster, amounted to 220; but more than double that number perished, and probably there was not one among the survivors who had not to lament the loss of friends and kinsfolk.