92 THE KOBTHEBN MOUNTAINS. 



at most to see among them what my fancy had pictured 

 among the serrated chines and green gorges of St. Vincent, 

 Guadaloupe, and St. Lucia, hanging gardens compared witli 

 ^vhich those of Babylon of old must have been Cockney 

 mounds. The rock among these mountains, as I have said 

 already, is very seldom laid bare. Decomposed rapidly by 

 the troj)ic rain and heat, it forms, even on the steepest slopes, 

 a mass of soil many feet in depth, ever increasing, and ever 

 sliding into the valleys, mingled with blocks and slabs of 

 rock still undecomposed. The waste must be enormous now. 

 Were the forests cleared, and the soil no longer protected by 

 the leaves and bound together by the roots, it would increase 

 at a pace of which we in this temj)erate zone can form no 

 notion, and the whole mountain-range slide down in deluges 

 of mud, as, even in the temperate zone, the Mont Yentoux 

 and other hills in Provence are slidini]^ now, sinc-e thev have 

 been rashly cleared of their primaeval coat of woodland. 



To this degrading influence of mere rain and air must be 

 attributed, I think, those vast deposits of boulder which 

 encumber the mouths of all the southern glens, sometimes to 

 a height of several hundred feet Did one meet them in 

 Scotland, one would pronounce thom at once to be old glacier- 

 moraines. But ]\Iessrs. AVall and Sawkins, in their geological 

 survey of this island, have abstained from expressing any such 

 opinion; and I think wisely. They are more simply explained 



