The summer of 1806 had been very rainy; and on the first and second of
September it rained incessantly. New crevices were observed in the flank
of the mountain; a sort of cracking noise was heard internally; stones
started out of the ground; detached fragments of rocks rolled down the
mountain. At two o'clock in the afternoon, on the 2d of September, a
large rock became loose, and in falling, raised a cloud of black dust.
Toward the lower part of the mountain, the ground seemed pressed down
from above; and, when a stick or a spade was driven in, it moved of
itself. A man who had been digging in his garden ran away, from fright
at these extraordinary appearances; soon a fissure, larger than all the
others, was observed; insensibly, it increased: springs of water ceased
all at once to flow, the pine trees of the forest absolutely reeled;
the birds flew away screaming. A few minutes before five o'clock, the
symptoms of some mighty catastrophe became still stronger; the whole
surface of the mountain seemed to glide down, but so slowly as to afford
time to the inhabitants to go away. An old man, who had often predicted
some such disaster, was quietly smoking his pipe; when told by a young
man running by, that the mountain was in the act of falling, he rose and
looked out, but came into his house again, saying he had time to fill
another pipe. The young man, continuing to fly, was thrown down several
times, and escaped with difficulty; looking back, he saw the house
carried off, all at once.
Another inhabitant, being alarmed, took two of his children, and ran
away with them, calling to his wife to follow with the third; but she
went in for another, who still remained, (Marianne, aged five;) just
then, Francisca Ulrich, their servant, was crossing the room with this
Marianne, whom she held by the hand, and saw her mistress; at that
instant, as Francisca afterward said, "the house appeared to be torn
from its foundation, (it was of wood,) and spun round and round like a
teetotum; I was sometimes on my head, and sometimes on my feet, in total
darkness, and violently separated from the child." When the motion
stopped, she found herself jammed in on all sides, with her head
downward, much bruised; and in extreme pain. She supposed she was buried
alive, at a great depth; with much difficulty, she disengaged her right
hand, and wiped the blood from her eyes. Presently, she heard the faint
moans of Marianne, and called her by her name; the child answered that
she was on her back, among stones and bushes, which held her fast, but
that her hands were free, and that she saw the light, and then something
green; she asked whether people would not come soon to take them out.
Francisca answered that it was the day of judgment, and that no one was
left to help them, but that they would be released by death, and be
happy in Heaven. They prayed together; at last Francisca's ear was
struck by the sound of a bell, which she knew to be that of Stenenberg;
then seven o'clock struck in another village, and she began to hope
there were still living beings, and endeavored to comfort the child; the
poor little girl was at first clamorous for her supper; but her cries
soon became fainter, and at last quite died away. Francisca, still with
her head downward, and surrounded with damp earth, experienced a sense
of cold in her feet almost insupportable; after prodigious efforts, she
succeeded in disengaging her legs, and thinks this saved her life. Many
hours had passed in this situation, when she again heard the voice of
Marianne, who had been asleep, and now renewed her lamentations. In the
meantime, the unfortunate father, who, with much difficulty, had saved
himself and two children, wandered about till daylight, when he came
among the ruins to look for the rest of his family; he soon discovered
his wife, by a foot which appeared above the ground; she was dead, with
a child in her arms. His cries, and the noise he made in digging, were
heard by Marianne, who called out. She was extricated, with a broken
thigh, and saying that Francisca was not far off, a farther search led
to her release also, but in such a state that her life was despaired of.
She was blind for some days, and remained subject to convulsive fits of
terror. It appeared that the house, or themselves, at least, had been
carried down about one thousand five hundred feet from where it
stood before.
In another place, a child two years old was found unhurt, lying on his
straw mattress upon the mud, without any vestige of the house from which
he had been separated. Such a mass of earth and stones rushed at once
into the lake of Sowertey, although five miles distant, that one end of
it was filled up, and a prodigious wave passing completely over the
island of Schwanau, seventy feet above the usual level of the water,
overwhelmed the opposite shore, and, as it returned, swept away into the
lake many houses with their inhabitants. The chapel of Olton, built of
wood, was found half a league from the place it had previously occupied,
and many large blocks of stone completely changed their position.