SION.

43

Branson and Nasimore, formerly remarkable for the large pro-portion of cretins among their population.

On the 16th of June, 1818, this town suffered very severelyfrom an inundation of the Dranse, which rises among the glaciersofthe Valde Bagnes, and falls into the Rhone at Martigny .It was occasioned by the bursting of the dam of ice that restrainedthe lake of Mauvoisin , which, swelled by the melting of the gla-cier, through the unusual heat of the season, to the extent of7,500 feet long, 500 broad and 180 deep, broke down this bar-rier, carrying along with it houses, trees, masses of earth, rockand whatever else opposed its progress through the valley of Bag-nes. Accompanied by a thick black smoke like that proceedingfrom a fire, the water poured through the narrow pass leadinginto that valley in a mass 300 feet deep. At the village of Lour-tier, fifteen dwelling-houses were destroyed by the torrent, atChampsee thirteen, at Lapey seven, besides nearly one hundredbarns and other buildings, in which several persons lost theirlives. Before it reached Martigny , the stream divided into threebranches in the extensive plain where it deposited the greatestpart of the timber broughtdown with it, and then discharged itselfat several points into the Rhone. In the town and neighbour-hood of Martigny , about eighty buildings were destroyed, andthough we have no precise statement of the number of personswho perished there, yet it may be inferred from the fact, that inthe first week after the catastrophe, thirty-four bodies of the suf-ferers were found and interred. More than four-fifths of thecrops and half of the fruit-trees were destroyed, and it was cal-culated that 30,000 days’ work would be required to repair thedamage done to the dykes, which were broken down to theextent of six thousand fathoms, to collect the immense quantityof wood and timber floated down by the flood, and to clear andopen the streets and roads. Of the rapidity of the inundation

g 2