A RACE WITH AN AVALANCHE.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume IV, Issue 174, 28 July 1876, Page 14

A RACE WITH AN AVALANCHE.

— »-t — It was four years ago last winter. I was coming down with a train loaded with cattle. The weather had been bad for weeks, and the snow lay deep, but was melting off fast in the warm weather that had lasted nearly a week. The ground was saturated, and I noticed that things looked shaky on the mountain. I was feeling my way carefully, thinking the track might spring, as the bed was wet and sloppy, when just as I got around the point of this ridge, I looked up, and it seemed to me that the whole mountain above me had broken loose. For hundreds of feet wide the hillside was in motion and charging down on me. The slide started 100 yards above the track, and was coining right down on me like lightning. Eocks, trees, and snow drifts plunged down the face of the mountain with a thundering roar, and seemed bent on overwhelming us and burying us in the canon thousands of feet below, I was never so close to death before, although I have had my share of perils on the road. For a moment I was stupified, the danger was so great and escape so hopeless, but only for a moment. I determined not to die without an effort, but clapped on all steam, while the brakes were thrown off at the same time. You can see for yourself that the grade is heavy here, and can believe that we made fast time. The engine seemed to know her danger, and to gather herselfftor an effort, she leaning, quivering, and snorting down the grade in the maddest race I ever saw. Down came the avalanche like lightning directly upon us, throwing up clouds of flying snow and splinters and rocks, and away flew the old engine like a thing of life and beauty, as she was, dragging the cars like the -wind down the grade alfter her, abreast the slide. But it seemed doomed to be all in vain. The avalanche came faster every moment. It was almost upon us. The rocks began to bound against the cars and over them, and the train was hidden in a cloud of snow. But we were flying through the air now j the wheels seemed never to touch the rail, and jus* as I was giving up hope the engine rushed past the little point of land just back .there where the little ravine comes down. Thia turned the current of the slide, so to speak, a little, and was our salvation. The engine rushed past the point just as the slide reached the track, and a big pine, uprooted in the edge of the avalanche, fell acroEs the next car to the hist one, and crushed it. The track was swept away like a cobweb in a gale, the coupling of the cars broke, and the cars fell into the chasm left in the wake of the slide, and were carried down to the river a thousand yards below. What there is left of them lies there yet. The jerk made the engine and train jump the track, but she kept on her feet, and got off with a few bruises. That I account one of th» greatest dangers I ever met in my twenty years of railroading,—' San Francisco Chronicle.'