46 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



THE TORRENTS OF SWITZERLAND. 



By EDGAR E. DAWSON, M. E. 



MARK TWAIN once said that he was in constant expectation 

 in Switzerland of seeing a farmer fall out of his farm. 

 The farmer has in many cases appreciated his hazardous position 

 when harvesting his crops, and has put on crampoons to prevent 

 a precipitous trip into the valley below. The crampoons prevent 

 the farmer leaving his farm in such an undignified manner, but they 

 do not prevent that same farm leaving its position on the mountain 

 side. To show how, in many cases, the mountain sides are kept 

 intact is the object of this paper. The old simile, " I am as sure of it 

 as of the ground on which I stand," would be as much out of place 

 in some parts of Switzerland as in those parts of the world where 

 earthquakes are endemic. In fact, in these latter places, though the 

 surface may receive a good shaking, it generally returns to somewhat 

 the same neighborhood after its nervous peregrinations are over. Not 

 so with the Swiss mountain side. When part of the mountain takes 

 leave of the rest, it is forever. 



Switzerland is often spoken of somewhat derisively as a garden, 

 so perfectly have its pleasure grounds been laid out, and so completely 

 comfortable does one find one's self in the midst of Nature's grand- 

 eurs. If its water courses had not been controlled and cared for as 

 are those of a well-conducted park it would be chaos! The con- 

 stant and vigilant struggle the Swiss have been forced to maintain 

 against the liquid element is much to their credit, for they have 

 generally been victorious. They have spent enormous sums of 

 money in keeping their torrents and rivers within reasonable limits, 

 and are even now, at times, forced to suppress new insurrections 

 on the part of these irresponsible agents. The corrections of the 

 water courses have been necessary for several reasons. In the first 

 place, the erosions on the mountain sides result in deposits which 

 present different inconveniences, of which I shall speak later. In the 

 second place, the erosions are frequently the cause of landslides. 

 The work of regulating the action of the water courses is now done 

 according to accepted rules based on experience and on theories which 

 have been confirmed by facts. Years ago, before the confederation 

 took charge of this matter, it was done often in a haphazard, em- 

 pirical fashion by the local authorities, with or without the aid of an 

 engineer. But some great disasters in the canton of Grisons 

 awakened the people to what might occur to many of them who had 

 hitherto been more fortunate. At the end of September, 1868, both 

 slopes of the Alps, and particularly the cantons of Valais and 



