The Earth As Modified By Human Action Part 14

Causes of Inundations.

The immediate cause of river inundations is the flow of superficial and subterranean waters into the beds of rivers faster than those channels can discharge them. The insufficiency of the channels is occasioned partly by their narrowness and partly by obstructions to their currents, the most frequent of which is the deposit of sand, gravel, and pebbles in their beds by torrential tributaries during the floods. [Footnote: The extent of the overflow and the violence of the current in river- floods are much affected by the amount of sedimentary matter let fall in their channels by their affluents, which have usually a swifter flow than the main stream, and consequently deposit more or less of their transported material when they join its more slowly-moving waters. Such deposits const.i.tute barriers which at first check the current and raise its level, and of course its violence at lower points is augmented, both by increased volume and by the solid material it carries with it, when it acquires force enough to sweep away the obstruction.--Risler, Sur L influence des Forets sur les Cours d eau, in Revue des Eaux et Forets, 10th January, 1870.

In the flood of 1868 the torrent Illgraben, which had formerly spread its water and its sediment over the surface of a vast cone of dejection, having been forced, by the injudicious confinement of its current to a single channel, to discharge itself more directly into the Rhone, carried down a quant.i.ty of gravel, sand, and mud, sufficient to dam that river for a whole hour, and in the same great inundation the flow of the Rhine at Thusis was completely arrested for twenty minutes by a similar discharge from the Nolla. Of course, when the dam yielded to the pressure of the acc.u.mulated water, the damage to the country below was far greater than it would have ben had the currents of the rivers not been thus obstructed.--Marchand, Les Torrents des Alpes, in Revue des Eaux et Forets, Sept., 1871.]

In accordance with the usual economy of nature, we should presume that she had everywhere provided the means of discharging, without disturbance of her general arrangements or abnormal destruction of her products, the precipitation which she sheds upon the face of the earth.

Observation confirms this presumption, at least in the countries to which I confine my inquiries; for, so far as we know the primitive conditions of the regions brought under human occupation within the historical period, it appears that the overflow of river-banks was much less frequent and destructive than at the present day, or, at least, that rivers rose and fell less suddenly, before man had removed the natural checks to the too rapid drainage of the basins in which their tributaries originate. The affluents of rivers draining wooded basins generally transport, and of course let fall, little or no sediment, and hence in such regions the special obstruction to the currents of water-courses to which I have just alluded does not occur. The banks of the rivers and smaller streams in the North American colonies were formerly little abraded by the currents. [Footnote: In primitive countries, running streams are very generally fringed by groves, for almost every river is, as Pliny, Nat. Hist., v. 10, says of the Upper Nile, an opifex silvarum, or, to use the quaint and picturesque language of Holland's translation, "makes shade of woods as he goeth."] Even now the trees come down almost to the water's edge along the rivers, in the larger forests of the United States, and the surface of the streams seems liable to no great change in level or in rapidity of current.

[Footnote: A valuable memoir by G. Doni, in the Rivista Forestale for October, 1863, p. 438, is one of the best ill.u.s.trations I can cite of the influence of forests in regulating and equalizing the flow of running water, and of the comparative action of water-courses which drain wooded valleys and valleys bared of trees, with regard to the erosion of their banks and the transportation of sediment.

"The Sestajone," remarks this writer, "and the Lima, are two considerable torrents which collect the waters of two great valleys of the Tuscan Apennines, and empty them into the Serchio. At the junction of these two torrents, from which point the combined current takes the name of Lima, a curious phenomenon is observed, which is in part easily explained. In rainy weather the waters of the Sestajone are in volume only about one-half those of the Lima, and while the current of the Lima is turbid and muddy, that of the Sestajone appears limpid and I might almost say drinkable. In clear weather, on the contrary, the waters of the Sestajone are abundant and about double those of the Lima. Now the extent of the two valleys is nearly equal, but the Sestajone winds down between banks clothed with firs and beeches, while the Lima flows through a valley that has been stripped of trees, and in great part brought under cultivation."

The Sestajone and the Lima are neither of them what is technically termed a torrent--a name strictly applicable only to streams whose current is not derived from springs and perennial, but is the temporary effect of a sudden acc.u.mulation of water from heavy rains or from a rapid melting of the snows, while their beds are dry, or nearly so, at other times. The Lima, however, in a large proportion of its course, has the erosive character of a torrent, for the amount of sediment which it carries down, even when it is only moderately swollen by rains, surpa.s.ses almost everything of the kind which I have observed, under a.n.a.logous circ.u.mstances, in Italy.

Still more striking is the contrast in the regime of the Saint-Phalez and the Combe-d'Yeuse in the Department of Vancluse, the latter of which became subject to the most violent torrential floods after the destruction of the woods of its basin between 1823 and 1833, but has now been completely subdued, and its waters brought to a peaceful flow, by replanting its valley. See Labussiere, Revue Agric. et Forestiere de Provence, 1866, and Revue des Eaux et Forets, 1866.]

Inundations in Winter.

In the Northern United States, although inundations are not very unfrequently produced by heavy rains in the height of summer, it will be found generally true that the most rapid rise of the waters, and, of course, the most destructive "freshets," as they are called in America, are occasioned by the sudden dissolution of the snow before the open ground is thawed in the spring. It frequently happens that a powerful thaw sets in after a long period of frost, and the snow which had been months in acc.u.mulating is dissolved and carried off in a few hours. When the snow is deep, it, to use a popular expression, "takes the frost out of the ground" in the woods, and, if it lies long enough, in the fields also. But the heaviest snows usually fall after midwinter, and are succeeded by warm rains or sunshine, which dissolve the snow on the cleared land before it has had time to act upon the frost-bound soil beneath it. In this case, the snow in the woods is absorbed as fast as it melts, by the soil it has protected from freezing, and does not materially contribute to swell the current of the rivers. If the mild weather, in which great snow-storms usually occur, does not continue and become a regular thaw, it is almost sure to be followed by drifting winds, and the inequality with which they distribute the snow over the cleared ground leaves the ridges of the surface-soil comparatively bare, while the depressions are often filled with drifts to the height of many feet. The knolls become frozen to a great depth; succeeding partial thaws melt the surface-snow, and the water runs down into the furrows of ploughed fields, and other artificial and natural hollows, and then often freezes to solid ice. In this state of things, almost the entire surface of the cleared land is impervious to water, and from the absence of trees and the general smoothness of the ground, it offers little mechanical resistance to superficial currents. If, under these circ.u.mstances, warm weather accompanied by rain occurs, the rain and melted snow are swiftly hurried to the bottom of the valleys and gathered to raging torrents. It ought further to be considered that, though the lighter ploughed soils readily imbibe a great deal of water, yet gra.s.s-lands, and all the heavy and tenacious earths, absorb it in much smaller quant.i.ties, and less rapidly than the vegetable mould of the forest. Pasture, meadow, and clayey soils, taken together, greatly predominate over sandy ploughed fields, in all large agricultural districts, and hence, even if, in the case we are supposing, the open ground chance to have boon thawed before the melting of the snow which covers it, it is already saturated with moisture, or very soon becomes so, and, of course, cannot relieve the pressure by absorbing more water.

The consequence is that the face of the country is suddenly flooded with a quant.i.ty of melted snow and rain equivalent to a fall of six or eight inches of the latter, or even more. This runs un.o.bstructed to rivers often still-bound with thick ice, and thus inundations of a fearfully devastating character are produced. The ice bursts, from the hydrostatic pressure from below, or is violently torn up by the current, and is swept by the impetuous stream, in large ma.s.ses and with resistless fury, against banks, bridges, dams, and mills erected near them. The bark of the trees along the rivers is often abraded, at a height of many feet above the ordinary water-level, by cakes of floating ice, which are at last stranded by the receding flood on meadow or ploughland, to delay, by their chilling influence, the advent of the tardy spring.

Another important effect of the removal of the forest shelter in cold climates may be noticed here. We have observed that the ground in the woods either does not freeze at all, or that if frozen it is thawed by the first considerable snow-fall. On the contrary, the open ground is usually frozen when the first spring freshet occurs, but is soon thawed by the warm rain and melting snow. Nothing more effectually disintegrates a cohesive soil than freezing and thawing, and the surface of earth which has just undergone those processes is more subject to erosion by running water than under any other circ.u.mstances. Hence more vegetable mould is washed away from cultivated grounds in such climates by the spring floods than by the heaviest rain at other seasons.

In the warm climates of Southern Europe, as I have already said, the functions of the forest, so far as the disposal of the water of precipitation is concerned, are essentially the same at all seasons, and are a.n.a.logous to those which it performs in the Northern United States in summer. Hence, in the former countries, the winter floods have not the characteristics which mark them in the latter, nor is the conservative influence of the woods in winter relatively so important, though it is equally unquestionable.

If the summer floods in the United States are attended with less pecuniary damage than those of the Loire and other rivers of France, the Po and its tributaries in Italy, the Emme and her sister torrents which devastate the valleys of Switzerland, it is partly because the banks of American rivers are not yet lined with towns, their sh.o.r.es and the bottoms which skirt them not yet covered with improvements whose cost is counted by millions, and, consequently, a smaller amount of property is exposed to injury by inundation. But the comparative exemption of the American people from the terrible calamities which the overflow of rivers has brought on some of the fairest portions of the Old World, is, in a still greater degree, to be ascribed to the fact that, with all our thoughtless improvidence, we have not yet bared all the sources of our streams, not yet overthrown all the barriers which nature has erected to restrain her own destructive energies. Let us be wise in time, and profit by the errors of our older brethren!

The influence of the forest in preventing inundations has been very generally recognized, both as a theoretical inference and as a fact of observation; but the eminent engineer Belgrand and his commentator Valles have deduced an opposite result from various facts of experience and from scientific considerations. They contend that the superficial drainage is more regular from cleared than from wooded ground, and that clearing diminishes rather than augments the intensity of inundations.

Neither of these conclusions appears to be warranted by their data or their reasoning, and they rest partly upon facts, which, truly interpreted, are not inconsistent with the received opinions on these subjects, partly upon a.s.sumptions which are contradicted by experience.

Two of these latter are, first, that the fallen leaves in the forest const.i.tute an impermeable covering of the soil over, not through, which the water of rains and of melting snows flows off, and secondly, that the roots of trees penetrate and choke up the fissures in the rocks, so as to impede the pa.s.sage of water through channels which nature has provided for its descent to lower strata.

As to the first of those, we may appeal to familiar facts within the personal knowledge of every man acquainted with the operations of sylvan nature. Rain-water never, except in very trifling quant.i.ties, flows over the leaves in the woods in summer or autumn. Water runs over them only in the spring, in the rare cases when they have been pressed down smoothly and compactly by the weight of the snow--a state in which they remain only until they are dry, when shrinkage and the action of the wind soon roughen the surface so as effectually to stop, by absorption, all flow of water. I have observed that when a sudden frost succeeds a thaw at the close of the winter, after the snow has princ.i.p.ally disappeared, the water in and between the layers of leaves sometimes freezes into a solid crust, which allows the flow of water over it. But this occurs only in depressions and on a very small scale; and the ice thus formed is so soon dissolved that no sensible effect is produced on the escape of water from the general surface.

As to the influence of roots upon drainage, we have seen that there is no doubt that they, independently of their action as absorbents, mechanically promote it. Not only does the water of the soil follow them downwards, but their swelling growth powerfully tends to enlarge, not to obstruct, the crevices of rock into which they enter; and as the fissures in rocks are longitudinal, not mere circular orifices, every line of additional width gained by the growth of roots within them increases the area of the crevice in proportion to its length.

Consequently, the widening of a fissure to the extent of one inch might give an additional drainage equal to a square foot of open tubing.

The observations and reasonings of Belgrand and Valles, though their conclusions have not been accepted by many, are very important in one point of view. There writers insist much on the necessity of taking into account, in estimating the relations between precipitation and evaporation, the abstraction of water from the surface and surface-currents, by absorption and infiltration--an element unquestionably of great value, but hitherto much neglected by meteorological inquirers, who have very often reasoned as if the surface-earth were either impermeable to water or already saturated with it; whereas, in fact, it is a sponge, always imbibing humidity and always giving it off, not by evaporation only, but by infiltration and percolation.

The remarkable historical notices of inundations in France in the Middle Ages collected by Champion [Footnote: Les Inondations en France depuis le VIe siecle jusqu'a nos jours, 6 vols, 8vo. Paris, 1858-64. See a very able review of this learned and important work by Prof. Messedaglia, read before the Academy of Agriculture at Verona in 1864.] are considered by many as furnishing proof, that when that country was much more generally covered with wood than it now is, destructive inundations of the French rivers were not less frequent than they are in modern days. But this evidence is subject to this among other objections: we know, it is true, that the forests of certain departments of France were anciently much more extensive than at the present day; but we know also that in many portions of that country the soil has been bared of its forests, and then, in consequence of the depopulation of great provinces, left to reclothe itself spontaneously with trees, many times during the historic period; and our acquaintance with the forest topography of ancient Gaul or of mediaeval France is neither sufficiently extensive nor sufficiently minute to permit us to say, with certainty, that the sources of this or that particular river were more or less sheltered by wood at any given time, ancient or mediaeval, than at present. [Footnote: Alfred Maury has, nevertheless, collected, in his erudite and able work, Les Forets de la Gaule et de l'ancienne France, Paris, 1867, an immense amount of statistical detail on the extent, the distribution, and the destruction of the forests of France, but it still remains true that we can very seldom p.r.o.nounce on the forestal condition of the upper valley of a particular river at the time of a given inundation in the ancient or the mediaeval period.] I say the sources of the rivers, because the floods of great rivers are occasioned by heavy rains and snows which fall in the more elevated regions around the primal springs, and not by precipitation in the main valleys or on the plains bordering on the lower course.

The destructive effects of inundations, considered simply as a mechanical power by which life is endangered, crops destroyed, and the artificial constructions of man overthrown, are very terrible. Thus far, however, the flood is a temporary and by no means an irreparable evil, for if its ravages end here, the prolific powers of nature and the industry of man soon restore what had been lost, and the face of the earth no longer shows traces of the deluge that had overwhelmed it.

Inundations have even their compensations. The structures they destroy are replaced by better and more secure erections, and if they sweep off a crop of corn, they not unfrequently leave behind them, as they subside, a fertilizing deposit which enriches the exhausted field for a succession of seasons. [Footnote: The productiveness of Egypt has been attributed too exclusively to the fertilizing effects of the slime deposited by the inundations of the Nile; for in that climate a liberal supply of water would produce good crops on almost any ordinary sand, while, without water, the richest soil would yield nothing. The sediment deposited annually is but a very small fraction of an inch in thickness.

It is alleged that in quant.i.ty it would be hardly sufficient for a good top-dressing, and that in quality it is not chemically distinguishable from the soil inches or feet below the surface. But to deny, as some writers have done, that the slime has any fertilizing properties at all, is as great a error as the opposite one of ascribing all the agricultural wealth of Egypt to that single cause of productiveness.

Fine soils deposited by water are almost uniformly rich in all climates; those brought down by rivers, carried out into salt-water, and then returned again by the tide, seem to be more permanently fertile than any others. The polders of the Netherland coast are of this character, and the meadows in Lincolnshire, which have been covered with slime by warping, as it is called, or admitting water over them at high tide, are remarkably productive.

Recent a.n.a.lysis is said to have detected in the water of the Nile a quant.i.ty of organic matter--derived mainly, no doubt, from the decayed vegetation it bears down from its tropical course--sufficiently large to furnish an important supply of fertilizing ingredients to the soil.

It is computed that the Durance--a river fed chiefly by torrents, of great erosive power--carries down annually solid material enough to cover 272,000 acres of soil with a deposit of two-fifths of an inch in thickness, and that this deposit contains, in the combination most favorable to vegetation, more azote than 110,000 tons of guano, and more carbon than 121,000 acres of woodland would a.s.similate in a year. Elisee Reclus, La Terre, vol. i., p. 467. On the chemical composition, quant.i.ty, and value of the solid matter transported by river, see Herve Magnon, Sur l'Emploi des Eaux dans les Irrigations, 8vo. Paris, 1869, pp. 132 et seqq. Duponchel, Traite d'Hydraulique et de Geologie Agricoles. Paris, 1868, chap. i., xii., and xiii.]

If, then, the too rapid flow of the surface-waters occasioned no other evil than to produce, once in ten years upon the average, an inundation which should destroy the harvest of the low grounds along the rivers, the damage would be too inconsiderable, and of too transitory a character, to warrant the inconveniences and the expense involved in the measures which the most competent judges in many parts of Europe believe the respective governments ought to take to obviate it.

Destructive Action of Torrents.

But the great, the irreparable, the appalling mischiefs which have already resulted, and which threaten to ensue on a still more extensive scale hereafter, from too rapid superficial drainage, are of a properly geographical, we may almost say geological, character, and consist primarily in erosion, displacement, and transportation of the superficial strata, vegetable and mineral--of the integuments, so to speak, with which nature has clothed the skeleton frame-work of the globe. It is difficult to convey by description an idea of the desolation of the regions most exposed to the ravages of torrent and of flood; and the thousands who, in these days of swift travel, are whirled by steam near or even through the theatres of these calamities, have but rare and imperfect opportunities of observing the destructive causes in action. Still more rarely can they compare the past with the actual condition of the provinces in question, and trace the progress of their conversion from forest-crowned hills, luxuriant pasture grounds, and abundant cornfields and vineyards well watered by springs and fertilizing rivulets, to bald mountain ridges, rocky declivities, and steep earth-banks furrowed by deep ravines with beds now dry, now filled by torrents of fluid mud and gravel hurrying down to spread themselves over the plain, and dooming to everlasting barrenness the once productive fields. In surveying such scenes, it is difficult to resist the impression that nature p.r.o.nounced a primal curse of perpetual sterility and desolation upon these sublime but fearful wastes, difficult to believe that they wore once, and but for the folly of man might still be, blessed with all the natural advantages which Providence has bestowed upon the most favored climes. But the historical evidence is conclusive as to the destructive changes occasioned by the agency of man upon the flanks of the Alps, the Apennines, the Pyrenees, and other mountain ranges in Central and Southern Europe, and the progress of physical deterioration has been so rapid that, in some localities, a single generation has witnessed the beginning and the end of the melancholy revolution.

I have stated, in a general way, the nature of the evils in question, and of the processes by which they are produced; but I shall make their precise character and magnitude better understood by presenting some descriptive and statistical details of facts of actual occurrence. I select for this purpose the south-eastern portion of France, not because that territory has suffered more severely than some others, but because its deterioration is comparatively recent, and has been watched and described by very competent and trustworthy observers, whose reports are more easily accessible than those published in other countries.

[Footnote: Streffleur (Ueber die Natur und die Wirkungen der Wildbuche, p. 3) maintains that all the observations and speculations of French authors on the nature of torrents had been antic.i.p.ated by Austrian writers. In proof of this a.s.sertion he refers to the works of Franz von Zallinger, 1778, Von Arretin, 1808, Franz Duile, 1826, all published at Innsbruck, and Hagenus Beschreibung neuerer Wa.s.serbauwerke, Konigsberg, 1826, none of which works are known to me. It is evident, however, that the conclusions of Surell and other French writers whom I cite, are original results of personal investigation, and not borrowed opinions.]

The provinces of Dauphiny and Provence comprise a territory of fourteen or fifteen thousand square miles, bounded north-west by the Isere, north-east and east by the Alps, south by the Mediterranean, west by the Rhone, and extending from 42 degrees to about 45 degrees of north lat.i.tude. The surface is generally hilly and even mountainous, and several of the peaks in Dauphiny rise above the limit of perpetual snow.

Except upon the mountain ridges, the climate, as compared with that of the United States in the same lat.i.tude, is extremely mild. Little snow falls, except upon the higher mountains, the frosts are light, and the summers long, as might, indeed, be inferred from the vegetation; for in the cultivated districts, the vine and the fig everywhere flourish; the olive thrives as far north as 43 and one half degrees, and upon the coast grow the orange, the lemon, and the date-palm. The forest trees, too, are of southern type, umbrella pines, various species of evergreen oaks, and many other trees and shrubs of persistent broad-leaved foliage, characterizing the landscape.

The rapid slope of the mountains naturally exposed these provinces to damage by torrents, and the Romans diminished their injurious effects by erecting, in the beds of ravines, barriers of rocks loosely piled up, which permitted a slow escape of the water, but compelled it to deposit above the dikes the earth and gravel with which it was charged.

[Footnote: Whether Palissy was acquainted with this ancient practice, or whether it was one of those original suggestions of which his works are so full, I know not, but in his treatise, Des Eaux et Fontaines, he thus recommends it, by way of reply to the objections of "Theorique," who had expressed the fear that "the waters which rush violently down from the heights of the mountain would bring with them much earth, sand, and other things," and thus spoil the artificial fountain that "Practique"

was teaching him to make: "And for hindrance of the mischiefs of great waters which may be gathered in a few hours by great storms, when thou shalt have made ready thy parterre to receive the water, thou must lay great atones athwart the deep channels which lead to thy parterre. And so the force of the rushing currents shall be deadened, and thy water shall flow peacefully into his cisterns."--Oeuvres Completes, p. 178.]

At a later period the Crusaders brought home from Palestine, with much other knowledge gathered from the wiser Moslems, the art of securing the hillsides and making them productive by terracing and irrigation. The forests which covered the mountains secured an abundant flow of springs, and the process of clearing the soil went on so slowly that, for centuries, neither the want of timber and fuel, nor the other evils about to be depicted, were seriously felt. Indeed, throughout the Middle Ages, these provinces were well wooded, and famous for the fertility and abundance, not only of the low grounds, but of the hills.

Such was the state of things at the close of the fifteenth century. The statistics of the seventeenth show that while there had been an increase of prosperity and population in Lower Provence, as well as in the correspondingly situated parts of the other two provinces I have mentioned, there was an alarming decrease both in the wealth and in the population of Upper Provence and Dauphiny, although, by the clearing of the forests, a great extent of plough-land and pasturage had been added to the soil before reduced to cultivation. It was found, in fact, that the augmented violence of the torrents had swept away, or buried in sand and gravel, more land than had been reclaimed by clearing; and the taxes computed by fires or habitations underwent several successive reductions in consequence of the gradual abandonment of the wasted soil by its starving occupants. The growth of the large towns on and near the Rhone and the coast, their advance in commerce and industry, and the consequently enlarged demand for agricultural products, ought naturally to have increased the rural population and the value of their lands; but the physical decay of the uplands was such that considerable tracts were deserted altogether, and in Upper Provence, the fires which, in 1471 counted 897, were reduced to 747 in 1699, to 728 in 1733, and to 635 in 1776. [Footnote: These facts I take from the La Provence au point de vue des Bois, des Torrents et des Inondations, of Charles de Ribbe, one of the highest authorities.]

Surell--whose admirable work, Etude sur les Torrents des Hautes Alpes, first published in 1841, [Footnote: A second edition of this work, with an additional volume of great value by Ernest Cezanne, was published at Paris, in two 8vo volumes, in 1871-72.] presents a most appalling picture of the desolations of the torrent, and, at the same time, the most careful studies of the history and essential character of this great evil--in speaking of the valley of Devoluy, on page 152, says: "Everything concurs to show that it was anciently wooded. In its peat-bogs are found buried trunks of trees, monuments of its former vegetation. In the framework of old houses, one sees enormous timber, which is no longer to be found in the district. Many localities, now completely bare, still retain the name of 'wood,' and one of them is called, in old deeds, Comba nigra [Black forest or dell], on account of its dense woods. These and many other proofs confirm the local traditions which are unanimous on this point.

"There, as everywhere in the Upper Alps, the clearings began on the flanks of the mountains, and were gradually extended into the valleys and then to the highest accessible peaks. Then followed the Revolution, and caused the destruction of the remainder of the trees which had thus far escaped the woodman's axe."

In a note to this pa.s.sage the writer says: "Several persons have told me that they had lost flocks of sheep, by straying, in the forests of Mont Auroux, which covered the flanks of the mountain from La Cluse to Agneres. These declivities are now as bare as the palm of the hand."

The ground upon the steep mountains being once bared of trees, and the underwood killed by the grazing of horned cattle, sheep, and goats, every depression becomes a water-course. "Every storm," says Surell, page 153, "gives rise to a new torrent. [Footnote: No attentive observer can frequent the southern flank of the Piedmontese Alps or the French province of Dauphiny, for half a dozen years, without witnessing with his own eyes the formation and increase of new torrents. I can bear personal testimony to the conversion of more than one gra.s.sy slope into the bed of a furious torrent by baring the hills above of their woods.]

Examples of such are shown, which, though not yet three years old, have laid waste the finest fields of their valleys, and whole villages have narrowly escaped being swept into ravines formed in the course of a few hours. Sometimes the flood pours in a sheet over the surface, without ravine or even bed, and ruins extensive grounds, which are abandoned forever."

I cannot follow Surell in his description and cla.s.sification of torrents, and I must refer the reader to his instructive work for a full exposition of the theory of the subject. In order, however, to show what a concentration of destructive energies may be effected by felling the woods that clothe and support the sides of mountain abysses, I cite his description of a valley descending from the Col Isoard, which he calls "a complete type of a basin of reception," that is, a gorge which serves as a common point of acc.u.mulation and discharge for the waters of several lateral torrents. "The aspect of the monstrous channel," says he, "is frightful. Within a distance of less than two English miles, more than sixty torrents hurl into the depths of the gorge the debris torn from its two flanks. The smallest of these secondary torrents, if transferred to a fertile valley, would be enough to ruin it."

The eminent political economist Blanqui, in a memoir read before the Academy of Moral and Political Science on the 25th of November, 1843, thus expresses himself: "Important as are the causes of impoverishment already described, they are not to be compared to the consequences which have followed from the two inveterate evils of the Alpine provinces of France, the extension of clearing and the ravages of torrents. ... The most important result of this destruction is this; that the agricultural capital, or rather the ground itself--which, in a rapidly increasing degree, is daily swept away by the waters--is totally lost. Signs of unparalleled dest.i.tution are visible in all the mountain zone, and the solitudes of those districts are a.s.suming an indescribable character of sterility and desolation. The gradual destruction of the woods has, in a thousand localities, annihilated at once the springs and the fuel.

Between Gren.o.ble and Briancon, in the valley of the Romanche, many villages are so dest.i.tute of wood that they are reduced to the necessity of baking their bread with sun-dried cow-dung, and even this they can afford to do but once a year.

"Whoever has visited the valley of Barcelonette, those of Embrun, and of Verdun, and that Arabia Petraea of the department of the Upper Alps, called Devoluy, knows that there is no time to lose--that in fifty years from this date France will be separated from Savoy, as Egypt from Syria, by a desert." [Footnote: Ladoucette says the peasant of Devoluy "often goes a distance of five hours over rocks and precipices for a single [man's] load of wood;" and he remarks on another page, that "the justice of peace of that canton had, in the course of forty-three years, but once heard the voice of the nightingale."--Histoire, etc, des Hautes Alpes, pp. 220, 434.]

It deserves to be specially noticed that the district here referred to, though now among the most hopelessly waste in France, was very productive even down to so late a period as the commencement of the French Revolution. Arthur Young, writing in 1789, says: "About Barcelonette and in the highest parts of the mountains, the hill-pastures feed a million of sheep, besides large herds of other cattle;" and he adds: "With such a soil and in such a climate, we are not to suppose a country barren because it is mountainous. The valleys I have visited are, in general, beautiful." [Footnote: The valley of Embrun, now almost completely devastated, was once remarkable for its fertility. In 1800, Hericart de Thury said of it: "In this magnificent valley nature had been prodigal of her gifts. Its inhabitants have blindly revelled in her favors, and fallen asleep in the midst of her profusion."--Becquerel, Des Climats, etc., p. 314.] He ascribes the same character to the provinces of Dauphiny, Provence, and Auvergne, and, though he visited, with the eye of an attentive and practised observer, many of the scenes since blasted with the wild desolation described by Blanqui, the Durance and a part of the course of the Loire are the only streams he mentions as inflicting serious injury by their floods. The ravages of the torrents had, indeed, as we have seen, commenced earlier in some other localities, but we are authorized to infer that they were, in Young's time, too limited in range, and relatively too insignificant, to require notice in a general view of the provinces where they have now ruined so large a proportion of the soil.

But I resume my citations.

"I do not exaggerate," says Blanqui. "When I shall have finished my description and designated localities by their names, there will rise, I am sure, more than one voice from the spots themselves, to attest the rigorous exactness of this picture of their wretchedness. I have never seen its equal even in the Kabyle villages of the province of Constantine; for there you can travel on horseback, and you find gra.s.s in the spring, whereas in more than fifty communes in the Alps there is absolutely nothing.

"The clear, brilliant, Alpine sky of Embrun, of Gap, of Barcelonette, and of Digne, which for months is without a cloud, produces droughts interrupted only by diluvial rains like those of the tropics. The abuse of the right of pasturage and the felling of the woods have stripped the soil of all its gra.s.s and all its trees, and the scorching sun bakes it to the consistence of porphyry. When moistened by the rain, as it has neither support nor cohesion, it rolls down to the valleys, sometimes in floods resembling black, yellow, or reddish lava, sometimes in streams of pebbles, and over huge blocks of stone, which pour down with a frightful roar, and in their swift course exhibit the most convulsive movements. If you overlook from an eminence one of these landscapes furrowed with so many ravines, it presents only images of desolation and of death. Vast deposits of flinty pebbles, many feet in thickness, which have rolled down and spread far over the plain, surround large trees, bury even their tops, and rise above them, leaving to the husbandman no longer a ray of hope. One can imagine no sadder spectacle than the deep fissures in the flanks of the mountains, which seem to have burst forth in eruption to cover the plains with their ruins. Those gorges, under the influence of the sun which cracks and shivers to fragments the very rocks, and of the rain which sweeps them down, penetrate deeper and deeper into the heart of the mountain, while the beds of the torrents issuing from them are sometimes raised several feet in a single year, by the debris, so that they reach the level of the bridges, which, of course, are then carried off. The torrent-beds are recognized at a great distance, as they issue from the mountains, and they spread themselves over the low grounds, in fan-shaped expansions, like a mantle of stone, sometimes ten thousand feet wide, rising high at the centre, and curving towards the circ.u.mference till their lower edges meet the plain.

"Such is their aspect in dry weather. But no tongue can give an adequate description of their devastations in one of those sudden floods winch resemble, in almost none of their phenomena, the action of ordinary river-water. They are now no longer overflowing brooks, but real seas, tumbling down in cataracts, and rolling before them blocks of stone, which are hurled forwards by the shock of the waves like b.a.l.l.s shot out by the explosion of gunpowder. Sometimes ridges of pebbles are driven down when the transporting torrent does not rise high enough to show itself, and then the movement is accompanied with a roar louder than the crash of thunder. A furious wind precedes the rushing water and announces its approach. Then comes a violent eruption, followed by a flow of muddy waves, and after a few hours all returns to the dreary silence which at periods of rest marks these abodes of desolation.

[Footnote: These explosive gushes of mud and rock appear to be occasioned by the caving-in of large ma.s.ses of earth from the banks of the torrent, which dam up the stream and check its flow until it has acquired volume enough to burst the barrier and carry all before it. In 1827, such a sudden eruption of a torrent, after the current had appeared to have ceased, swept off forty-two houses and drowned twenty-eight persons in the village of Goncelin, near Gren.o.ble, and buried with rubbish a great part of the remainder of the village."

The French traveller, D'Abbadie, relates precisely similar occurrences as not unfrequent in the mountains of Abyssinia.--Surrell, Etudes, etc; 2d edition, pp. 224, 295.]