A MOVING MOUNTAIN.

Taranaki Daily News, 10 December 1921, Page 9

A MOVING MOUNTAIN.

' GIGANTIC AVALANCHES. The extraordinary movement of the Sandling, the mountain 5(»00ft. high in the romantic Slazkammergut district of Upper Austria, which was first reported last November, is-now becoming troublesome and dangerous. Almost daily, states a telegram from Gratz, to the Berlin Tageblatt. gigantic avalanches of rock* crash from the summit down the pastures and the lower slopes, gravely endangering the safety of the peasants and their cattle. Under the western side of the mpuntain the stratum of marl has collapsed. As a- result the peak has lost its support, and the fall of all the adjacent pastures, woods, and screes of boulders, and of the huge mountain crest which towers above them with its ridges, crags and pinnacles, is now inevitable. The pressure of this immense mass of rodk on the ground at the foot of the lofty precipices is forcing out the accumulation of rock, earth, and clay, which forms the interior of the mountain, so that this solid matter is being driven like a river in flood down into the valleys, where it is sweeping i a wide belt of destruction. , The ridges and pinnacles which used , to rise under the great western wall 1 of the Sandling have some of them dis- I appeared completely-, others have sunk I some 156 ft. into the ground; and others i are trembling at precipitous angles. The mass of earth, rock, and clay, driven out of the mountain, has now advanced ’ thre? miles and engulfed <*■ large tract of xeceafe -